End of Summer Novel
by Saddletank
Summary: Set in 1995, one year on from the end of Whisper of the Heart. Chronologically, this is the first of my stories, so read this one first. This is the [Novel] version, updated from the [Screenplay and Script] version.
1. Introduction

**The End of Summer (Narrative version)  
**

**Introduction **

This is a rewrite. I originally wrote the _End of Summer_ over a three week period in October 2006 and it was in screenplay form with character lines laid out as a script and some camera and musical notes, plus blocks of descriptive text. The whole thing presented as though it were an anime movie, the sequel to _Whisper of the Heart._ At first I thought this was quite cool and arty but some feedback I got convinced me that screenplays/scripts are great if you're using them to make an anime but not so good to relax with for a good read. So I have redone the whole thing as a narrative, a novel style story. Quite a lot (well actually a huge amount) of descriptive stuff has been added in which the scene and atmosphere is set and most characters are fleshed out using this 'conversational descriptive' technique. The Mr. Nishi character seems to have taken on a more significant role in this version, I'm not sure how that happened, I certainly didn't intend it, he kind of invited himself in and once he was here I found that he could help me by hovering in Seiji's background and helping Seiji become more interesting. In several places new snippets of plot and dialogue have been inserted and I have plugged a couple of continuity or character loopholes. I have also inserted one new long 'flashback' scene into Chapter 16 - _Meeting Luisa_ of Seiji playing the violin – this is currently my favourite scene in the story, because it connects the girl and the boy together in a powerful way and also suggests a link with _The Attic Room_. I find the dichotomy between their childlike innocent love and them both wanting something more but being unsure how to articulate that need quite fascinating and the flashback _Seiji Speaks Without Words_ is part of the struggle they are both trying to deal with. And finally there is a whole new chapter – Chapter 20 - _The Fountain_ which takes place on the morning the girl and boy leave Cremona. The original story (screenplay/script) was about 33,000 words, this narrative runs to about 45,000 words. If you like short fanfics in which the characters cut to the chase on line three then this isn't for you. If you like mellow atmospheric descriptive passages and characters revealed gradually then you might want to read on. If you enjoy reading this just 10 percent of the amount I enjoyed writing it then I'll be delighted. I originally intended the old screenplay version to be removed but following some feedback decided to run with both versions side by side. I'm only doing this because I can. I personally now prefer this version and if fanfiction dot net decide they don't want two versions of the same story up then the screenplay one will go.

If you've read the screenplay/script version then you can skip on now, the disclaimer below is identical.

_The End of Summer_ is the story of Shizuku Tsukishima and Seiji Amasawa (two fifteen year olds attending their first year of high school), during July, August and September 1995. The story is set in the year following the end of _Whisper of the Heart_, a beautiful and enchanting anime directed by Yoshifumi Kondo and produced in 1995 by the Japanese anime company Studio Ghibli. Note that _Whisper of the Heart _seems to end on November 11th 1994. By the time this story begins the teenagers' relationship has matured over the intervening eight months.

Oh, and one last thing before I go. I have set up a forum. You can discuss _The End of Summer, The Attic Room _and_ The Other Side of the World_ if you wish. If you feel a burning need to tell me my work is complete pants then please do it there. I'd like to use the forum for C&C, feedback etc so that any discussion is public rather than in the form of replies to reviews which I hate because I lose them. I'll probably use the forum as a species of blog where I'll discuss what is happening / may happen in _The Other Side of the World_; thouights about stuff I plan to write; why I wrote things the way I did; and the price of fish. In case you are having trouble finding it, it's in the Anime/Whisper section.

What follows is a work of fiction, it has no connection whatever with Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaka, Yoshifumi Kondo or any films or other works produced by that company or those persons. It is purely fan fiction. However I have borrowed very heavily from the film _Whisper of the Heart_ many locations, characters and concepts. I have read both of the manga by Aoi Hiiragi that have the Seiji and Shizuku characters in but apart from one character and a couple of incidental snippets lifted from the manga, this fiction borrows only from the anime. It probably contradicts the sequel manga directly in that it's taking place at about the same time. Feel free to download this story (if you really think it's worth it) and you may upload it elsewhere but if you do it MUST NOT BE ALTERED IN ANY WAY. You must include this introduction and notice with the story and please don't claim it's your work. If you upload it elsewhere please provide me a link to its location. And you MAY NOT charge a payment for the files (as if anyone would actually _pay_ to read this… ag…). If anyone reading this wants to comment in any way, positive or negative or even insult me then feel free to do so, I'm online at the Ghibli Tavern and Wingsee forums as user Saddletank and my e-mail is saddletank(at)dsl(dot)pipex(dot)com so now you have no excuse not to have a go at me.

That's quite enough of that stuff. Now, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin…


	2. Chapter 1 Two Lovers

**The End of Summer**

**-o-**

**for Megan – who is also growing up**

**-o-**

**Chapter One – Two Lovers  
**  
The city was an ocean, vast, stormy, always restless. Grey, dirty, the oily waters treacherous with currents that could draw in and drown the unwary, the foolish, the naïve and the young. It teemed with life. A smog hung over it like a dawn sea mist, the kind of mist that makes the fishing boats hoot their sirens to each other as they leave harbour. Down among the reefs of concrete and steel the cars, the buses and the trucks hooted as they slowly negotiated the crowded narrows.

Away from the deep and turbulent centre, towards the shallows, the bays and the coastline, the tide was out. The tide of millions of people, schoolchildren and commuters had gone out this morning and the coast was calmer and a little quieter now. But even with the tide out the shallows were never completely quiet, young mothers with prams, local workers, the elderly, went about their lives, like the sea birds you only see on the flat sand when the tide is out. Where did they go at other times of the day? No-one seemed to know.

These particular bays and shallows some 20 miles west of Tokyo centre, were called Tama New Town, the man made city of the late sixties, a place built out of nothing but virgin forest where over 300,000 people now lived. Tama had its low lying beach: the business district where the Keio railway line ran below the hills. It had its high cliffs, the Iroha-Zaka district from the top of which fine houses looked down upon the tide ebbing and flowing each day.

It was summer, July, and the sun poured down its strength-sapping heat onto Tama. School was ended for the afternoon, the children had dispersed to their clubs, their homes, their sports pitches, their bus shelters where they might congregate with their friends and put to rights the problems of their own small worlds. Soon it would be evening and the tide would turn, flowing back up the beach, into the bays and inlets the millions would return, pouring in waves from trains, buses, cars. This was the pulse of the city, the life that rolled ceaselessly on, tide upon tide, month upon month, year upon year.

On the cliff side above Tama's beach on the hills at the highest point of Iroha-Zaka was one particular house, a wooden building of Dutch barn style, brown painted. Of all the houses along this hillside it looked the most like a beach house, it seemed the most comfortable here. The others, brick or concrete built, painted or rendered, looked somehow alien, intrusive. The wooden house was painted in earth colours and unlike its neighbours it held something of the spirit of having grown here, like an ancient tree. It had three storeys facing the valley, the lower two each had a wooden balcony fenced by a balustrade. The lowest balcony was supported on deep wooden piles against the slope of the hill below. It had the feel almost of a boat pier. Above these two main floors was a smaller bedroom storey.

On the road-facing side of the house the middle floor was at ground level, and it formed a shop. A curious shop full of curious old things, incidental things that may have come here from far away, Europe perhaps, or America; rocking horses, dolls, music boxes, model ships, clocks, funny old paintings in styles no-one liked (or bought) any more. The lowest story was only half the depth of the house, it faced toward the city-sea and was reached either by a wooden stair down through the floor of the shop or from an outside service stair at the side of the building where the rubbish bins were kept. The basement storey was a workshop, and magic happened there.

An old man lived in the house, a man who created things with his hands, with his quiet mind, with his heart. Unlike the millions who flowed with the tide each day, Mr. Nishi kept his own routine, often the shop wouldn't open at all for days and he would travel to auctions where he would buy interesting broken items of furniture, unusual pictures, clocks or old toys, bringing them back for restoration. His hands would work tirelessly and lovingly upon them, even while upstairs his shop was closed.

Sometimes someone might come into the shop, although rarely did they buy anything. People would usually come in if they were lost and wanted directions to somewhere else, somewhere interesting. But this didn't worry Mr. Nishi. A lot of his trade was through personal contacts and he might one day gather up five or ten pieces, lock up his shop for a couple of days, travel away and sell them again to galleries, antique dealers or at auctions. He didn't do this for the money (at least I don't think he did, he never told me he did - unless he needed to eat of course), he did it because it was a way of life to which he connected, where communication with people was for a real reason and not for necessity. He did it because he loved it and he hated being dragged by the tide. He'd never been dragged by the tide. Well, only once. In 1939 a tide of war had dragged him away from Germany when he was 20. This tide had forced him to leave someone behind in Germany and he'd never seen her again. So now his life was committed to never being subject to any tide of men.

This afternoon the heat lay upon the house and pressed everything down. On the lower balcony in a shady corner dozed a large and rather fat brownish-grey cat. The cat had one ear of dark grey as though his maker had run out of paint right at the end and given up: _Never mind, _his maker thought, _one dark grey ear would do, we can recognize him by this ear. If he ever does anything naughty, we'll know which one he is._

Inside the workshop the shades were drawn down against the sun. A group of young people were there, teenagers from high school. They had finished school for the afternoon and at this time of day had left behind the things convention demanded they learn and were instead focussed on something they _chose_ to learn. Mr. Nishi liked people who chose to learn, especially young people. Young people were the future and he once told me that part of his job here on earth was to educate them into not being dragged by the tides.

Mr. Nishi was old, to the students he seemed ancient. He was also a little odd, it seemed. Even in the July heat he wore an old woollen cap like a skull cap. He had white hair and a bushy white moustache and beard an oddly affectionate twinkle in his eye. This afternoon he was teaching his regular violin making class how to correctly string a violin.

"It's important that the stringing is tensioned gradually. You cannot apply full tension to one string at first as that can apply stresses at one part of the bridge and damage the instrument. You must attach all strings loosely at first and then tension them gradually and equally over a period of several hours. Seiji, pay attention."

The boy he'd spoken to turned his face from the window where he'd been gazing. He was a good looking lean young man with a shock of unruly black hair and perceptive eyes. Seiji Amasawa was Mr. Nishi's grandson on his daughters side and this workshop was his second home, he seemed to spend more time here than in his parents house. Even though he obeyed his grandpa's reprimand, and turned his attention back to the class, his eyes were still full of lazy pleasure, he was thinking of other things.

Down the hill a little way, on a lower slope of the hillside, at a sharp curve in the road was the library, an ugly 1960s concrete and brick building with steel window frames. Two of the elusive daytime women with babies in prams stood on the pavement at the foot of the library steps in conversation. One of them laughed. It was a cheerful, summery sound. A blue delivery van drove by.

Inside the library the heat from the sun crushed everything, everyone. Like the pressure at the bottom of the sea, no-one could survive in it. The large light-giving windows of the reading room faced west, and sunlight streamed in, casting a striped pattern across the floor, the tables, the plastic chairs, the bookshelves. In its solid presence you could hardly move; you wouldn't want to move. Only the dust motes moved, drifting ceaselessly in the heat's own currents.

There were not many people in the room. A young man had gone to sleep at one table, his book open and forgotten in front of him. He was probably a high school student who needed to study but stayed up too late last night with his friends. All was quiet and still. A thin scholarly looking man with glasses and a shiny bald head sat at one of the tables. He was trying to read the paper but kept looking over the top of it irritably toward the source of a scratching sound that disturbed him.

A girl sat opposite him. She wore school uniform, a grey pleated skirt, a white blouse, a sailor _fuku, _a bottle green knotted cravat at her throat. She was about fifteen, slender, with brown hair cut quite short. Her dark eyes and pretty face were fixed in concentration and her pencil moved rapidly across a page, a steady flow of thoughts being transferred from her bright young mind onto the paper in a relentless but obviously pleasing rush. Around her were scattered several books, and various pieces of paper were filled with her neat writing. Her pencil scratched away and even the slight cough of the irritated bald man trying to get her attention had no effect. In disgust he got up, folded his paper under his arm and left. Shizuku Tsukishima was both passionately in love with her writing and with the boy in the workshop who was thinking about her at exactly this moment.

She stopped writing. Something had disturbed her. She looked up. Seiji was sat opposite her, in the chair vacated moments before by the bald man. The boy did not sit facing her but sideways, legs crossed, relaxed, with a book in his hands. He often sat this way in a laid back manner. Shizuku stared at him. She could see right though him to the bookshelves behind. He was slightly transparent, not there, a dream. He looked up from his book at her and smiled. She smiled back at the apparition and it slowly faded. She sat for a few moments, looking at the space where he had been, tapping the end of her pencil to her lips. Then she returned to her writing, the slight smile still on her face.

It was some while later that a member of staff spoke quietly to her and reminded her that the library was closing in five minutes. She checked her watch, time to go. She gathered up her papers and books, returning those she didn't need to the shelves. She went out. Part way down the library steps, to one side, where there was a patch of shade by a bush, she sat down, holding her books and papers on her knee with one hand and scooping her skirt up under her legs demurely with the other. She sat patiently waiting, looking at the view, watching the distant city, watching the tide come in.

Some time passed, it might have been thirty minutes, I can't remember clearly now but that's not important.

Seiji arrived on his bike. He jumped off at the bottom of the steps,  
"Yo! And if it isn't Shizuku Tsukishima!"  
"Hey, Seiji," she got up and came down the steps. He watched her, grinning.  
"How was your day? Get much done?"  
"Yes, tons. It's going really well. I have to get a proper story plan in place though, it's just going off in all sorts of mad directions. It's got a life of its own. I think if I could put reins on all this there's enough here for about three books!" She patted the part finished manuscript. She stepped off the bottom step, Seiji, holding his bike with one hand, reached out with his other arm and gave her a quick hug. "Mmmm… missed you."  
"So, can I read it yet?" he peered eagerly at the top page, trying to see the title.  
"No way!" she half turned away, hiding the bundle, "You can't disturb a true artist part way through her work, this is serious stuff!"  
Seiji stuck his tongue out at her and she made a rude noise in return.  
"And you? How did the violin class go?"  
"Ah, you know, same old stuff. Sometimes all this theory work gets pretty dull."They began walking side by side down the hill, Seiji wheeling his bike beside him. Sunlight dappled through the trees - _komorebi_ - making bright spots on their clothes. Ahead of them, down the hill between the trees on one side and houses on the other, a small slice of cityscape was visible. A train passed across this vista, made tiny by the distance.  
"But you need to keep up with it, you need to know all the history and background as well as having a craftsman's skills."  
"I know," he replied, "but that doesn't help when I can't keep my mind on the work."  
"And why's that?" He didn't reply, he just shot her one of his crooked grins.

Above them the trees stood limp, dusty, motionless in the heat. Above _them_ the burning dome of the summer sky, painfully blue and apart from some haze on the horizon, totally cloudless. In the distance it was possible to hear the evening tide rolling in, the low sonorous noise always made by a distant city. Two birds flew past and way up in the sky a jet plane buzzed, just a faint hum, far, far up. A white contrail was drawn across the sky behind it.


	3. Chapter 2 Seiji Comes to Dinner

**Chapter Two – Seiji Comes to Dinner **

On the lower part of this ocean's beach, near the Keio railway line were crammed in the homes of many thousands of people. This area, once a model development of new construction, of mass housing but designed with areas of greenery and nearby open spaces, was now tired and aging. These _danchi_ or apartment blocks some four or five storeys high were repeated in rows across the low hillside. Around them a community of small businesses clustered – launderettes, convenience stores, family run supermarkets and newsagents, take away food stores, bars.

If the business district of Tama was its brain then the Atago and Higashiteragata _danchi_ were its heart. Here was the true community. Here the young mothers with prams mysteriously vanished at the end of the day, to prepare meals, to put their babies to bed, to welcome home their partners. Here was where the highest fingers of the tide reached, the waves broke at the Mukouhara station and the small individual wavelets and fingers of foam lapped at these buildings and, oh so tired, at the end of their journey, they rested. On the morrow they would ebb again.

Here among the bustling crowded _danchi_ a new generation of Tama residents were being born, were growing up and discovering life. Here they were learning, feeling, flowering and loving. And it was here that Shizuku lived, here she brought Seiji in the evening of that furnace of a day. The sun was still high in the sky but it was westering now and the first hints of evening were among the longer shadows and the smells of dinners being prepared. The day still held its heat however and you could feel it radiating off the concrete of the _danchi_ walls.

The two teenagers turned off a street and onto the pathway leading to one apartment block, no different from a dozen others. Seiji parked his bike in the stand under its tin roof, with all the other bikes. At the entrance way to the stairwell he stood aside and let her go first. They climbed up three flights of stairs, to apartment 408. He held the girl's bundle of books and papers while she slipped her key in the lock. While she wasn't looking he sneaked a look at the title of her manuscript.

"Hi mom, I'm home!"

They kicked off their shoes and stepped up from the entryway. Shizuku led the way to the kitchen-dining-living room. This small space perhaps no more than twelve feet, or four metres square was the hub of this family. Down one wall was the kitchen, in the centre of the room a table and chairs, the wall opposite the kitchen was divided into two small zones, near the door surrounded by shelves groaning under the weight of innumerable books, was a tiny den, a work space where Shizuku's mother and father had their computer and their research materials. On the floor, piled up untidily against every wall, every cupboard, every vertical surface were more books, held together in untidy stacks with string. On the other side of a peninsular formed by a projecting book case in the part of the room towards the window, was a unit with a television, a music centre and one or two small decorative pieces, trying vainly and failing miserably to impart an air of comfort to the room. It wasn't by any means an attractive room, but it had soul, a sense of purpose, a sense of love. You could tell as soon as you walked in that despite the mess, despite an obvious shortage of money, this is where a family was being happy. Where good things _happened_. Shizuku came in.

"Mmm… smells good."  
"Hi dear, have a good day? Oh, hi Seiji,"

Shizuku's mother, Asako, was cooking dinner. She was a lady of about forty, still slim but wearing a tired, a worried face. The face of a person who simply worked too hard. She still wore her suit, with an apron over it. She'd not had time to change since getting home and starting dinner.

"Hi mom," Shizuku went straight to the fridge, "I'm parched!"  
"Hello Mrs. Tsukishima," Seiji offered the older woman a small bow.  
"No sign of your father yet. He must be still at the library, you didn't see him on the way out did you?"  
Shizuku's head was in the fridge, her reply muffled, it was as though the fridge spoke, "Mmm, oh yes, I forgot – he said he'd probably be late, their bar-coding software is playing up again."  
"Oh, and I went and broke the bank by buying some pork for dinner. Well, your father will just have to eat when he gets in – that is if you leave him any."

Shizuku shut the fridge door and cracked open a can of soft drink.

"Mom, can Seiji stay to dinner?"  
"Shizuku! It's very rude of you to help yourself like that and not offer your guest any!"  
"Hmm? Oh, here, want some?" she belatedly offered Seiji her can.  
"Um, no thanks, I'm fine,"

Seiji shifted nervously in the doorway. Like many young men who have not been to their girlfriends' house many times, he was ill at ease on Mrs. Tsukishima's territory. He was trying to feign a relaxed pose with his hands in his pockets but his tension spoke clearly enough. For one thing he hadn't come into the room, he stayed circumspectly beyond the invisible border of Asako's country.

"Yes, Seiji can stay, just you two make sure you leave something for your father to eat later."

The Tsukishima family was not financially well off and while Asako would always be the perfect hostess she felt tonight that the good quality food she had bought was for the family to eat together in private.

Shizuku's bedroom was nothing out of the ordinary, the usual scholastic teenager clutter lay about although in this case rather more books were apparent than you'd expect and rather fewer pop band posters. Her bed was a bunk bed, until last autumn her older sister had slept on the top bunk. She had left home at the end of October but replacing the bunk bed was very low down on Shizuku's parents list of needs. In any case the spare bunk could be used by Shiho if she ever came by and stayed over. The upper bunk meanwhile served as yet more storage space and it was filled with boxes and spare futons. The bed was an old wooden one, well built and dark varnished. It dominated the room, almost filling the wall opposite Shizuku's desk. She and Seiji sat on it. He relaxed back, lounging against the wall, his long legs folded loosely Japanese style. She perched on the edge, a book in her hands.

"Listen to this it's really neat: '…In Woking junction, until a late hour, trains were stopping and going on, others were shunting on the sidings, passengers were alighting and waiting, and everything was proceeding in the most ordinary way. A boy from the town … was selling papers with the afternoon's news. The ringing impact of trucks, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mingled with their shouts of "Men from Mars!". Excited men came into the station about nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance than drunkards might have done. …' Isn't that lovely, such wonderful use of language you can almost feel you're there…"  
"Who's that by?"  
"An Englishman called H G Wells. He was amazing. He lived over a hundred years ago but he wrote the most amazing stories, fantasies and such. Time machines, flying machines before man could even fly. There was him and this Frenchman living at the same time. Jules Verne. Between them they pretty much invented science fiction."  
"Shizuku – you are still studying for school aren't you? You know the next couple of years for us are going to be tough. The exams are no push-over and you need good grades."  
"Oh, Seiji, we've been over this time and time again. Of course I'm serious about my studies, you know that."  
"But every day you're writing or doing research for some story, I never see you with your nose in a school book."  
"You're beginning to sound like my sister."  
"Well maybe that's because we both care about you." She looked up from her book. Seiji stared at her intently, his eyes were hard.  
"I know you say you're studying, but I never see the evidence. High school isn't a game, you won't be able to goof off to tests like you did last year in junior high."  
"Oh, hello? Did my sister move back in or something? Seiji, I appreciate the lecture but I know what I'm doing. Developing my writing skills is the best thing I can do," she spoke more loudly, the colour rose in her face. Seiji became angry,  
"_No_, studying for exams is the best thing you can do. If you flunk out it will be all the more difficult to get grants for your writing work. And a place at university would be right out of the question."  
"Oh, and who said anything about university?"  
"You would be foolish to limit your options."  
"Listen to _you_ talking: _'I'm going off to Italy to learn violin making for ten years'_!"

She held his gaze for a long moment, a childish duel of wills developed. Neither would break the stare, be the one to admit they were wrong. Then she looked down.  
"Seiji I love you but sometimes I hate you too. You're always so… _right,"_ she made a _grrrrr_ noise of frustration, "Why can't you let _me_ be right once in a while?"  
"Get good grades at high school and I'll let you be as right as you like after that,"

His hard look softened. She looked up at him again and there was a smile at his eyes. How could you get cross with him? You'd hate him one minute when he was like this then a moment later, he'd turn on that crooked smile and there was no defence against it. He won so many arguments this way, making his point then eluding any reply with that look. In amused frustration Shizuku poked a finger in his side, making him laugh. She would love to hate him sometimes, but she couldn't.

"You're impossible!"

Her mom's voice drifted in from the kitchen, "Dinner you two!"


	4. Chapter 3 Bad News and Good

**Chapter Three – Bad News and Good **

It was evening. The day still held its heat, although now the powerful oven of afternoon had dissipated to a pleasant warmth. The kind of temperature when you could wear just a tee shirt and shorts and go out walking in the dark. The trees on the hilly part of town were mysterious in the gloom. Shizuku and Seiji walked in the shadows along a lane. There were streetlights here on the hillside roads but not close together and the low hanging branches created mysterious pools of darkness between them. Seiji wheeled his bike beside him; they had ridden up here and later he'd ride her home on it before going home himself.

They came to a wire fence beside the road and climbed through a hole - a hole no doubt used by children but no-one else. On a patch of waste ground beside a water tower were scrubby bushes, a concrete berm. They walked to the top of this berm and jumped down a step. A wide view from the hilltop opened before them. A panorama extending mile after mile towards Tokyo city centre. The sky was darkening and the first stars were out. Over the city in the distance the indigo of the night sky was polluted by the light made by men. The distant rumble of the deep ocean reached them even here, this wide sea, this city, was never quiet. A train passed in the distance.

This was Seiji and Shizuku's special place. For month upon month he'd come here alone, at night, or sometimes just before dawn. He'd stand and watch the light fade or grow. Watch the sun rise or see the shadows lengthen as it set below the hill behind him. His heart would feed on this view, here he could escape from the things he needed to escape from, put them aside for a few precious minutes. Last November (the eleventh it was - how he remembered that day) he had come here again, just before dawn at the lightening of the sky, in the frosty crispness of the late autumn. It had been the kind of secret morning when your breath clouds the air and ice formed on things changing them into something mysterious.

But that morning he hadn't been alone. He'd been back many times over the changing seasons but since then never alone. She was always with him. Sometimes he'd get up at a stupid hour in the dark and ride to her apartment, meet her and bring her here. She'd be waiting, dressed and ready for school. Three rings on the phone meant he was coming. They'd ride here and watch the sunrise. Often they'd not even speak. There was no need. Then he'd take her to the station and they'd catch the train to school. When they boarded the train their silent bond would stay with them, linking them in a way special only to them. They would stand by the train doors and in silence just look at each other. Each was like a meal to the other, each was like the necessary food that kept the other alive. No matter how hard work was at school or at home when families argued, if they were buffeted by whatever storms, provided they had each other then that was enough. To everyone else they were two ordinary students, anonymous among thousands. But they knew different.

Seiji sat down, leaning back against the concrete berm. He got comfortable and shifted his legs apart. Shizuku sat between them, her back to him, leaning back in his lap. The boy put his arms gently round her tummy, she rested her hands on his. They sat in silence watching the city, tracing the passage of the distant railway trains as they snaked among the hills, the buildings. There were times when they could sit like this, silently and need nothing else. Touching wasn't that important, and looks and words certainly weren't. Silence in each other's company was enough. She sometimes thought that these times were the best, the calmest, the warmest. If they had this, without the need to pollute the moment with communication, surely this was true love. Shizuku, her eyes half closed, her thoughts far away, began to hum broken snippets of a tune to herself. It was _Country Road_.

Seiji stared at the view. His brow furrowed and his mind seemed to chase a problem, the troubled thought passed over his eyes. A waft of breeze ruffled his hair.

"Shizuku?"  
"…Mmm?"  
"Was it hard for you when I was in Italy for two months?"  
"Yes, I missed you a lot. But in a way it helped me too because I got so much done. I really found out a lot about myself, what I could do, what I still need to do to be better."  
"Well… Um... I have some bad news. And some good…" She sat up and turned to look at him,  
"What?"  
"The bad news is I'm going away for a few weeks in August, uh… about three weeks. The same violin maker I went to before is holding a special summer course."  
"Oh, Seiji, that's great – will you get special tuition?" Shizuku's face clouded, her eyes didn't agree with her words.  
"That's right. This master only offers places to the most promising students he has seen over the last year. It's a great honour that he contacted grandpa and mentioned my name specifically. That means he thinks I show potential. It's going to really help me."  
"This is hard. I was looking forward to being with you all summer."  
"Well, that was the bad news. There is good news too…," he had a glint in his eye.  
"Tell me!"  
"I knew you'd be unhappy about this. So I contacted the place in Cremona and asked a few questions about the residential arrangements…"  
"And…?"  
"Well… how would you like to come too?"  
Her face lit with surprise, with excitement, "What? Go with you? Oh, Seiji, that would be amazing!"  
"Whoa – wait, wait," he lifted a hand toward her, palm outwards in a defensive gesture, "You need to discuss this with your parents. Grandpa and my mom and dad have agreed to cover my costs but you… well, you know…," he shrugged, "the flight won't be cheap…"  
"I'll talk to them right away!" She jumped up.  
"Please don't get your hopes up too high. Look, I've committed myself to going, it's a big break for me. But I know you'll be upset if you can't go, so please, you need to be realistic about this, the world can't revolve round you all the time."

It was later, the short summer night had finally chased away the day. Seiji had taken Shizuku back and cycled home to work late - again - at his school studies. The Tsukishima family's _danchi_ had some windows lit, others dark. From somewhere in another apartment a TV faintly chattered.

In the kitchen-diner a meeting was going on. The table had on it the usual family clutter. Even though Asako detested it, her husband Yasuya still sometimes smoked in the apartment. The ashtray on the table contained the debris of a stressful evening spent wrestling with spreadsheets and reports on the computer, compiling data for the library. Shizuku sat at one side of the table, her mother and father at the other. The three of them seemed to be in familiar seats, as though this were a common routine. Shizuku's father was speaking.

"I realise how important this is for you Shizuku, but it is very expensive. And the issue is its three weeks away from your study time. You can't afford to take a holiday like this when it's important that you prepare for school in September."  
"And we worry about you," her mother stated the obvious, "You will be on the other side of the world, all alone…"  
Shizuku whined, "Mom, I won't be alone. I will be near the teacher that Seiji is with, I'm sure he will keep an eye on me, please don't worry on that account."  
"Of course we worry," she replied, "you've never been so far away from home before."  
"Dad, I can take my school work with me. I'll have lots of time for that when Seiji is in his classes. And it will be such an opportunity. I'll try learning another language and – and… there is so much great stuff in Italy – history and art and everything, it will be the experience of a lifetime! Think how much it will help me when school opens again in September!"  
"What, lying by a pool sunning yourself for three weeks?" Yasuya folded his arms.  
"Dad! It won't be like that. I promise I'll study whenever I can."  
"You said that last year," her mother went onto the attack again, "and look what happened then, you got this writing project started and your grades went down so steeply. We were worried. How can we trust you?"  
"Mom. You can. I'm older now. I promise."  
Her father considered this a moment: "Well, as long as you promise not to waste the time…."  
"You mean I can go? Yaaaaaay!" Shizuku leapt up.  
"We still have to consider the cost Shizuku," her mother held deeper fears, a mothers fears, "this is going to take a huge chunk out of the money we have saved up."

But it was too late, the girl ran around the table and hugged her mom  
"Mom, dad, you're so cool. I love you!"


	5. Chapter 4 Father and Daughter

**Chapter Four – Father and Daughter**

It was two weeks later, the first of August. In Shizuku's bedroom a huge bag, a large soft military style hold-all with canvas handles, occupied the middle of the floor. Clothes, books, shoes and other packing were scattered about. She was shuttling between the bag and various drawers pulling out more things, she seemed to be packing enough for a year away. On her desk were more books and bottles: shampoo, moisturizer, sun protection, other toiletries. Shizuku knelt with her back to the desk and bent over the bag stuffing things in. Her father came in with a neatly folded pile of clothes in his arms.

"Here, your mother just finished the last few things." She seemed not to hear, "Shizuku?"  
"Um… thanks…," she didn't look up, "just on there is fine," she pointed to the bed and her father laid the laundry down.  
"Is that everything now?"  
"…think so," she glanced at her watch, "aah! Half an hour! Mr. Nishi is coming in half an hour!" she redoubled her efforts to stuff the bag in a frenzy of activity.

Her father gazed around the room, he looked at the empty upper bunk bed where his eldest daughter had slept until last year. His face became sad.  
"It's going to be so quiet round here."

Shizuku continued packing.  
"First Shiho moves out and now you're going too. The chicks are leaving the nest."

Still looking down, Shizuku paused in her packing, a pair of sandals in her hand halted in mid air, poised while she considered her fathers words. She looked up.  
"Dad, it's only three weeks."  
"But it's the beginning of something isn't it? This is change. There will be other trips away, time's moving on. You're growing up."

Shizuku finally tuned into her father's mood. Or at least she thought she did.  
"Dad, don't worry about me. I'll be fine and home again in no time. I'll write as often as I can."

Mr. Tsukishima looked down at his daughter. Her round face looked up.  
"It seems like only yesterday when you were just a tiny baby, sleeping in a cot in our room. How time flies," he shook his head gently, "I can't believe you'll be sixteen soon. Stand up child."

Shizuku laid down the sandals and slowly stood up.

The bag lay between them, a symbol of distance, of differences, of gaps in communication, of sometimes how far apart a teenager and a parent begin to drift. It wasn't long ago - last summer if memory serves me – that Shizuku had a close relationship with her father. But during recent months she had come to rely more and more on her mother as a sounding board, she found she needed to talk about things she was only comfortable sharing with a woman. Things you _could_ only share with a woman. Girl and man faced each other. Shizuku was grown up now, she might still act in childlike ways at times but she did so from inside a woman's body. She may not even have realised it but for her childhood was almost over. The time left to her to hold onto familiar things was slipping away. The end of summer was coming. Her father (like fathers almost always are but teenagers rarely see) was right. Shizuku had grown since that strange dawn last November when things became forever changed, she was now taller, her hair cut in a more grown up way and her profile betrayed that she was no longer a child.

"Look at you. You're a woman now. Please be careful. You know what I'm talking about don't you?" As for so many fathers and daughters, sex was a difficult subject.  
"Daaaa-d! Of course I'll be careful."  
"Time passes faster as you get older. Every day, every hour becomes more precious, you don't notice the wasted days until they're gone, and lost forever."  
"Dad…?"  
"Shizuku please understand this. What you are doing now is a great opportunity, a great privilege, so please use your time wisely. Make every day and hour count. Don't fritter your time away."

Shizuku looked down. She couldn't make eye contact with her father when he was in these odd moods.  
"Consider each moment and use it. You never know what each minute brings, each one, trivial in itself may be the turning point, the source of great things, great changes."  
"Dad, are you OK…?"  
"I love you. Please be careful."  
"Dad… if I don't get packed _right now_…"

In a rather clumsy movement, the father moved forward and reached out for the daughter. An instinctive reaction to the gesture brought her forward too and they held each other, in an awkward uncomfortable way, the bag between them preventing close contact, they hugged only at the shoulders. Mr. Tsukishima seemed unhappy with physical affection and he broke away quickly.

"I'll just check we have the flight tickets ready."

He turned and left the room. She realised too late that she'd misunderstood a special moment that cost her father a great deal of effort. She spoke quietly to the empty room,

"Dad. I love you too."

It was late morning, perhaps eleven, perhaps later. A small grey van drew up at the entrance steps at the roadside near the Tsukishima family's _danchi_. The engine idled a moment, then died. A high hedge bordered the apartment grounds and there was a signboard against it. The passenger door of the van slid open and Seiji climbed out. He walked over to the signboard and leaned against it. He checked his watch. Mr. Nishi got out of the drivers side and joined him. After a few moments (I'm sure Shizuku had been looking out of a window, waiting to catch the first sight of the van, we've all done it, haven't we?), she and her parents came down the steps from the apartment. Shizuku struggled with her monstrous bag. She also had a pink shoulder bag. Seiji came forward.

"Let me."  
"No, I'm fine."  
"At least let me help."

She put the bag down and she and Seiji took a handle each. They staggered to the rear of the van with it.

"Wow, did you pack the whole library?"  
"No, just non-fiction," she looked at him, dead-pan. He grinned back, and then her face split in a wondrous smile, "Morning Seiji."  
"Hey, it's good to see you."

Mr. Nishi walked up to Shizuku's father. He bowed and Mr. Tsukishima returned the formal greeting.

"Good morning. I am Seiji's grandfather, Shirou Nishi."  
"Pleased to meet you, I am Yasuya, Shizuku's father. May I introduce my wife Asako?" Asako bowed, and Mr. Nishi returned the greeting. Yasuya continued, "Shizuku speaks very highly of you, I feel I owe you a debt for having been of such a help to her last year when she was having difficulty with her studies."  
"You would be surprised. Your daughter is a very resourceful young lady. She was a great help to me also. It can get a little lonely up in my shop and I appreciate her effort to come over and provide me with some company."  
"I understand you have been tutoring your grandson to make violins?"  
"Indeed, but he is already exceeding in skill what I am able to teach him," he leaned forward conspiratorially and lowered his voice, "…although he himself will not admit that." He stood upright again, "I am sure he'll get a great deal from the schooling this trip will offer."

There was a slight pause. Another reminder of Shizuku's departure cooled Mr. and Mrs. Tsukishima's mood somewhat. Mr. Nishi continued,

"Seiji and Shizuku have hit it off well together don't you think? They both have a strong artistic talent and they are well matched."  
"Yes," Yasuya replied, "Shizuku talks about him all the time. By the way, your grandson, his father wouldn't be the Dr. Amasawa of Amasawa Electronics would he?"  
"Yes, that's right."

Seiji walked over from near the van,  
"Please, grandpa, sorry, but we need to be off."  
Mr. Tsukishima glanced at his watch, "I'm sorry, we must continue another time."  
Shizuku called from the rear seat of the van, "Bye mom, bye dad!"

Her parents came to the vehicle, reached in and gave her a final hug. Seiji got in the sliding door next to her. Mr. Nishi turned to Asako,

"It was a pleasure to meet you, I look forward to seeing you again."  
"Thank you. And thank you for taking Shizuku to the airport, we appreciate your kindness."  
"Really, it's my pleasure."  
Seiji's sing-song voice called from inside the van, "We're gonna miss the plaaa-aaane…"  
"Off you go now," Yasuya nodded to Seiji's grandfather, "Good luck. Safe journey."

Mr. Nishi climbed in and the van's small tinny motor cranked over and fired up with a puff of exhaust. He looked at Shizuku's parents and gave them a final nod. He checked his wing mirror and pulled out into the traffic. The kids waved frantically. Calls of "Byeeee!" "Safe trip!" "I'll wriiiiii-ite soon!" swooped like birds to and fro across the widening gap between those left behind and those leaving them.

Yasuya and Asako stood and watched the van getting smaller until it went over a rise in the road and vanished down the hill. An arm waved frantically from a window until it was lost to sight. Other traffic droned by. Shizuku's parents stood side by side. The van had been out of sight for twenty seconds before Asako stopped waving her hand and lowered it slowly. Yasuya put an arm around his wife's shoulders.

"Be safe," he whispered.

They turned reluctantly and walked arm in arm back up the steps.


	6. Chapter 5 A Great Adventure

**Chapter Five – A Great Adventure  
**

The small van, quite old and quite slow, joined the roaring, foaming river of traffic that ran down to the ocean that was Tokyo's city centre. The sky was blue, and fluffy white cumulus scudded by on a gentle breeze. Western folk music was playing on the van's radio; violins, guitar and flute, a cheering upbeat tune. The van came to a set of traffic lights and waited patiently until they turned green. It proceeded along a busy dual carriageway, faster traffic overtaking it. Inside the van the rear cargo compartment seemed to be full of Shizuku's huge bag and Seiji's rucksack. The two young people sat side by side in the seats behind the driver. He lay his arm along the back of her seat and tapped his fingers and hummed along in time to the music. Shizuku leaned forward a little and looked out the side window next to Mr. Nishi. She was alert, eager and expectant. A great adventure was starting.

Mr. Nishi drove carefully, he spoke without taking his eyes off the road,  
"Alright back there? Plenty of room?"  
"Yes, grandpa," replied Seiji, "I had to kick Shizuku out at the last set of lights though, but me and the Plus Four Bag of Hugeness have enough room now."

Mr. Nishi smiled and chuckled. He checked his rear view mirror and changed lanes. There was a sharp "Oi!" from behind him where presumably Shizuku had just poked Seiji for his poor humour.

Tokyo Narita airport's main terminal buildings came into view. The building frontage presented a cliché typical of a movie – the name written along it high up in large letters so the audience would know what it was. How thoughtful of the architect; thank you, sir. Taxis and cars queued at the passenger drop off lanes. It was busy. If Tokyo city was an ocean with strong tides and currents, then Narita could be likened to a whirlpool, a single powerful entity whose only purpose was to suck in millions of people each year, crunch them and then spew them out. As Mr. Nishi let the van roll slowly down the access road, his eyes already searching for a place to stop, a roar of jet engines could be heard and from behind the building a jet liner clawed its way up in a steep take off, dark fuel smoke hanging behind it.

The man hated doing this. What a bloody waste of time. Once a month he'd have to come here and meet his bitch of a sister and take her to see their mother in the hospital. Why the stupid cow couldn't just get a taxi and leave him to play golf he didn't know. Trouble was his father insisted on it, insisted on a last futile demonstration of family unity as their mother lay dying. But to what bloody purpose? Mother was unaware of pretty much everything by this stage, so for whom was this pointless charade enacted? The man slammed shut the hatchback door of his red car. He hated this. He had better things to do than waste his time collecting her and then bringing her back to the airport, over ninety minutes complete waste each way. He walked to the drivers' door. His wife came back from seeing the bitch-sister off.

"Come on, hurry up, let's get out of here."  
"Alright, stop nagging! It's not as though it's my fault!"  
Their small son moaned from the back seat, "Mom, I'm thirsty."

The man got in the driving seat. At least now he was behind the wheel, doing something manly, something that calmed him. He started the engine, revved up excessively and with a squeal of tyres pulled quickly out right in front of some stupid old coot in a grey van. _I'm a hurry, you old fart_, he thought, _so tough_. The red hatchback accelerated away down the drop off lane. Soon he would get out onto the inner ring road where he could put his foot down and get at least some enjoyment out of this wasted morning. The gap in the parked cars he left behind was pure gold-dust at passenger drop-off: an empty piece of pavement. A second later Mr. Nishi's grey van rolled slowly alongside it. He glanced into the gap that the man in a rush in the red car had vacated. He braked and then maneuvered backwards into the space. He leaned out of his side window and checked behind him then switched off the engine. _Thanks_, he silently spoke his gratitude to the red car driver.

"That was lucky."

They had secured a baggage trolley and piled their bags onto it. The three of them now stood outside the glass-walled main building. Inside crowds of people flung themselves willingly into the whirlpool of passenger processing. Outside, here on the pavement it was no less crowded, even standing still was stressful; you'd pick up on the tension of others, all of them, it seemed in a rush. A man in a dark suit ran by. The cars parked at the pavement were reflected in the glass walls, the grey van among them. The teenagers faced Mr. Nishi. All of a sudden the adventure had taken on another flavour. This was the obligatory goodbye scene, the final parting, although none of them could know how final it was.

"Well, this is it grandpa. Goodbye."  
Shizuku made a little bow, "Thank you so much for bringing us."  
"That's no trouble Shizuku," Mr. Nishi tilted his head to her in acknowledgement, "You take good care of Seiji for me now."

The old man smiled kindly but underneath he must have been fearful for the young people traveling so far.  
"I'll write."  
"Thank you. You just make sure it's not as long as the last thing you wrote me." For the last time the kind old man smiled at her.

Shizuku grinned. She turned away and adjusted the bags on the trolley. Seiji stepped closer to Mr. Nishi.  
"Bye, grandpa. Make sure you feed Moon."  
"Oh, don't you worry about that cat, I will. Now you make sure Shizuku is safe. You've a big responsibility there Seiji, that girl is in your care."  
"No problem. I'll watch out."

A family pushed past the man and his grandson. A husband and wife with elder daughter. A couple of paces behind them a young boy trailed along looking tired. The mother called back over her shoulder,

"Come on keep up, it's just a bit further."  
"And study hard," continued Shirou, "Signore Guarnieri is the best there is. I've known him years. If you follow his teaching you can never go wrong."  
"I understand grandpa."  
"Off you go now, safe journey."  
"If I can I'll phone you when we get there."  
"Thank you."

This was important for Seiji, he was Shizuku's guardian, her protector now, so he had to act like one. Men don't cry do they? So he was determined not to show emotion, which was a mistake, as it turned out, as this would be his last chance to commune with his grandpa in this way. Behind him Shizuku turned to face the old man and raised her hand in a final parting gesture. He smiled broadly and made a shoo-ing motion for them to go.

Inside the terminal building Shizuku and Seiji stood in a queue to check in their bags. The place was heaving with activity. His hands rested on the baggage trolley. She slipped her right arm inside his left and squeezed, giving him a broad grin. She curled up while still standing, lifting her shoulders and pushing her head down into them, making a scrunched up smiling motion with her whole body.

"This is great. I'm so excited," as well as her body, her voice seemed to bubble with anticipation.  
"Me too. Wait 'til you see Cremona, you're gonna love it."

She started bouncing up and down. She did a little boogie in her excitement.  
"I can't wait, I can't wait… Ooooh, yeah, we're going to I-ta-lee!"

The whirling machine of passenger processing sucked them in, identified them and their bags on its computer systems and then dumped them temporarily to one side until their flight was ready. They sat in the departure lounge. The big room was filled with rows of plastic seating. In the background more glass walls give a view of the aircraft parking bays. People sat about, chatting or flicking through magazines. The boy leaned back, his eyes closed, arms behind his head. She sat up looking about with interest. They had just their hand luggage with them now. A couple of drinks cans and an empty plastic sandwich container lay on the floor between them. A thought popped into Shizuku's head.

"Seiji, why didn't your parents bring you to the airport?"  
"Mmm?"  
"Why did your grandpa bring you and not them?"  
"Well," his eyes still closed, head back, "me and dad aren't getting on much at the moment. I didn't even ask him."  
"Oh."  
"I packed yesterday and grandpa took me to his place. I spent the night there. I just really wanted to be with him, y'know? Among the furniture, the clocks, the violins. It just seemed important that I be with him for the last night."  
"Oh. I see."  
"No, I don't think you do. Things are not good between me and dad right now. I didn't sleep too well last night. D'ya mind, I'm just dozing here…"  
"Sure."

She was a little put out by this brush off and turned her head, her eyes downcast. Soon however she looked up and quickly found something else to hold her attention.

We become a fly on the wall. We look vertically downwards into Seiji's face. His hands behind his head, elbows sticking out. Suddenly he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He frowned, there was anger there in his eyes. Shizuku couldn't see it but hatred boiled there for a moment. A robotic woman's voice came over the public announcement system.

"Japan Airlines flight JL417 for Milan Linate. Please proceed to boarding at gate sixteen."

Seiji's frown faded. He uncoiled his long thin arms and sat up. He looked at his watch. It spoke back to him in its own language, the only way it knew how. Its digital display showed 12:22:18, then it changed its mind and updated this old information to something more useful to the modern man 12:22:19. The boy didn't acknowledge the information. He spoke to the girl he loved, that even in his anger towards the person he had been thinking about, he loved more than anything.

"That's us."


	7. Chapter 6 JL417

**Chapter Six – JL417  
**

Outside on the hard standing at gate sixteen a white and red Japan Airlines Boeing 747 was parked. A mobile umbilical boarding bridge on wheels connected the departure building to the cabin door in the aircraft's left side. Its grey concertina walls were thrown into sharp relief by lines of shadow and light from the mid-day sun. On the concrete below a tractor rumbled away with a string of empty wire baggage cages on wheels. The driver appeared tiny and reinforced the strong impression of the vast size of the plane. A _danchi_ with wings.

At the plane's side a worker in blue overalls and bright yellow plastic safety vest pushed the cargo door closed and there was a loud thunk and click as the heavy pressure clips snapped home. On the flight deck the pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer ran through their last pre-flight checks, touching switches, examining dials, verbally acknowledging the status of things. Just inside the main cabin door a sharp dressed pretty Japan Airlines stewardess welcomed passengers on board and pointed out seat locations.

Inside the aircrafts main cabin there were three seats, then an aisle, then four seats in the centre, another aisle and finally three more seats. Rows of seats stretched back for what seemed like hundreds of feet. The plane was huge. Passengers began to slowly fill the cabin, seats were taken, overhead locker doors flung open, bags stuffed in. Children argued over window seats. Where they were needed the Japan Airlines cabin crew were there, appearing as though by magic and sorting out problems, answering questions. Seiji and Shizuku moved down an aisle among the bustle. Seiji, leading, looked at the numbers and letters on a seat row. He stopped.

"Here."

He reached up, opened the overhead locker and slung his rucksack and jacket in. He dropped down into a seat. Shizuku reached the row and lifted her pink bag up. Its shoulder strap caught on a seat back but she didn't realize. She tried to push the bag up into the storage bin and couldn't work out why it wouldn't go. She mumbled in frustration. Seiji looked at her. Because her arms were raised, her shirt had pulled up and away from the waistband of her skirt. Two inches of smooth honey coloured skin were a foot from Seiji's nose. Being a normal fifteen year old boy he couldn't help but stare. He froze for only a few seconds but for him the moment was an exquisite eternity. Then he came to his senses, his face went pink and he jumped up.

"I'll do it."  
"It's caught on something."  
"I got it. There. That's it. No, no, to me a bit. There."

The bag slid in. Shizuku lowered her arms and looked at him. His face was still pink.

"You OK?"  
"Sure. Warm in here, huh?"  
"No. The air conditioning is on. I'm _freezing_."  
"Ah, well. You want the window seat?"  
"Can I? Thanks!"

She slid in and sat, he squeezed in next to her. He grinned like an idiot.

Outside on the concrete stood a bright yellow steel tug – a low bodied tractor with large wheels and powerful engine. Its diesel motor idled, grumbling. A man sat in its driving cabin. It began to move, rolling slowly forwards and propelling a long round yellow steel bar with one axle at the far end. The tug approached the nose wheel assembly of the 747. The tyres of the aircraft were as high as the tug's cabin roof, and these front wheels were the smallest. The end of the yellow wheeled bar crept forward on its two large soft tyres and the coupling at the end engaged with a lug on the undercarriage arm between the two nose wheels. A ground crewman jogged forward and dropped in a steel pin and made an "OK" gesture to the tugs driver. He stepped back. The tug and the ground crewman were dwarfed by the massive bulk of the 747 above them. The ground crewman put a hand to his ear protectors, listening to a radio message. He shouted to the tugs driver:

"Clear to go!" He made a rotating, 'wind her up' gesture with his forearm.

The umbilical boarding bridge withdrew from the aircraft's side and the stewardess closed and locked the cabin door. The nose wheels with the tug's arm attached slowly began to turn. The tug motor roared, a great squirt of exhaust jetting out from the motor housing and the 747 was propelled backwards out onto the taxiway.

Inside the cabin Shizuku looked out the oval window.

"Oooh, we're moving."  
"Oh, yeah, here we go," he was excited too.

The aircraft moved slowly backwards, turning as the tug propelled it in a curve so that its nose lined up with the paint markings running down the taxiway. The tug halted and the big plane rocked very gently as it stopped. A ground crewman ran forward, freed the locking pin on the tug's towing bar and stepped well back. With a cloud of diesel fumes the tug backed away and headed off at speed in reverse to clear the taxiway. On the flight deck the crew readied themselves for instructions from the tower. All air traffic control communications were conducted, by international agreement, in English.

"Narita tower to JL417."  
"This is JL417, go ahead Tower."  
"JL417 you are clear to taxi to the south end of runway 34 left."  
"Clear to taxi to south end 34 left. Thank you, Tower."  
"JL417, hold on the taxiway at the end of 34 left, we have some Lufthansa traffic ahead of you."  
"Roger that Tower, Lufthansa traffic in front of us."

From high above, looking down, the big aircraft seemed no less tiny, the airside vehicles nearby appearing like toys. The plane began to roll and another jet ahead of it was also rolling down the taxiway with yet a third behind. Where the taxiway joined the end of the runway the concrete hardpan gave way to grass verges. Here there were low signboards with seemingly random numerals on them indicating location and directional information to plane crews. Beyond the end of the runway there was an earth berm topped with a wire security fence. Beyond the fence was a treeline and then roofs of city buildings. Above the city the sky was summer blue and the white clouds beckoned. The 747 rolled slowly to the end of the taxiway and halted as though considering its next move. The plane was kept waiting only a minute or so and then, guided by the invisible hand of the air traffic controller in the tower, it moved forward once more. As it crossed onto the runway its nose began to swing, sweeping round in a ninety degree turn, the plane moving carefully but smoothly. It faced down the runway and came to a stop. The red Japan Airlines logo showed prominently on its tail fin, four storeys high. Seiji leaned forward a little to look past Shizuku and see out her window.

"Any minute now…"

On the flight deck a voice spoke:

"Narita Tower to JL417. You are cleared for take off."  
"JL417 to Tower. Thank you."

The pilot turned to his co-pilot who nodded. The pilot placed his right hand, palm open and forwards, on the four big throttle levers. The younger co-pilot placed his open left hand over the pilot's right. The pilot checked with his colleagues face one last time.

"Let's go."

Both men pushed their hands forward. The huge machine sat in the heat on the concrete, behind it the heat haze caused the distant fence to waver like a mirage. A low growling sound began which quickly grew in volume and pitch to a powerful roar. The big plane squatted down momentarily pushing against the force of the wheel brakes. These were then released and the 747 began to move.

Shizuku looked to her right out the window. Her body began to shake a little as the planes' airframe communicated the stresses of take off to the passengers inside. Even inside the pressurized cabin the engine roar was noticeable. Shizuku's eyes widened,

"Oh, my…"

Seiji was more relaxed, his hands lay limp along his seat armrests. Suddenly Shizuku's left hand came down on top of his right, gripping tightly. He looked at her. He turned his hand over palm upwards and she held on tight to him, their fingers interlaced.

"Oh… my…oh – wow!"

The plane was accelerating hard now, both Shizuku's and Seiji's bodies were pushed back into their seats by the G-force.

"Oh, this is amazing!"

The 747 rolled down the runway, accelerating. The engine roar reached screaming pitch. The thing was so huge and so heavily loaded with fuel that it seemed it could never fly, the concrete runway unspooled below it like the film off a movie reel. The runway distance markers slid by the pilot and his co-pilot, and still the plane would not lift. On the flight deck, the rattling and vibration were extreme, everything seemed to bounce and judder, the cockpit dials were a blur, it seemed that the four engines couldn't possibly do this, it was too much.

The two men's hands stayed pressed hard against the throttle levers, open to their widest detent. The two teenagers hands stayed squeezed together.

The co-pilot glanced at his boss, he raised one eyebrow. It was very hot today, the high temperatures reduced air pressure making the air thinner. There was less air for the engines to chew on, less of it to slide over the wing surfaces. The pilot noticed his colleague looking at him, he gave the merest of nods. He'd done this hundreds of times.

The boy watched the girl carefully, she was looking out the window, her right hand gripped the seat armrest tightly. The boy thought she might be afraid. Seiji hadn't flown many times, but this _did_ seem to be a long takeoff run.

The two men's hands were pressed against the throttles. The shaking and rattling became intense, the cockpit tachometer showed nearly 200 knots. And then the nose wheel lifted, enough air was passing over the upper wing surface to significantly lower the pressure there and the faster air passing beneath lifted the thousands of pounds of deadweight that was the Boeing aircraft. The nose lifted higher and the body rotated, the plane sat up like a hungry dog begging on its hind legs.

Two hands were hard together. Shizuku's squeezed Seiji's. Shizuku stared out the window. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, she was almost hyperventilating with excitement. She tilted her head back as the aircraft lifted, her right hand pulling at the armrest as if she was praying the plane to climb, trying to heave it upwards with her own muscles.

Outside the sound of the screaming engines became unbearable. Then, at last, the main undercarriage lifted and the spinning tyres were spinning freely in air. A few feet only, several feet, twenty feet, fifty feet. Suddenly like a leaping animal it was airborne, the thrust of the engines and the speed of the airflow over its wings finally became strong enough to defeat gravity and it began to fly. At the rear of each engine nacelle there was a dull reddish glow and the engines and wings were distorted by waves of heat haze like a mirage in the desert. A slight cross wind hit the plane and it flew slightly crabwise. The nose tilted up even more and it appeared to climb at an impossible angle. The huge machine was airborne, and climbing. At about three hundred feet altitude and only six or seven seconds after leaving the ground the 747 passed over the end of the runway and crossed the boundary fence at the other side of Narita airport, more than three miles from where it had started. The younger co-pilot nodded to the pilot. He had a bead of sweat on his upper lip.

Shizuku was laughing with pure joy and excitement. She turned from looking out the window to look at Seiji. Her eyes were shining. He looked nonplussed, puzzled at her reaction.

"Uh… can I have my hand back now?"  
"Oh. Sorry," she started with surprise and lifted her hand from his, apparently unaware she'd held onto him. He lifted his arm and rubbed his wrist and palm.  
"Mmmm, that hurt."  
"I'm sorry, it's just that…. I mean wow, wasn't that exciting? That was like being an astronaut in a rocket!" She looked again out the window, leaning forward to see down. "Hey! We're so high already! Look at those tiny cars! Oh, yeah, this is amazing!"

Seiji continued to stare at her still mildly amused and puzzled. Then he knew,

"You've not flown before have you?"  
"No. Didn't I tell you?"  
He smiled, "No you didn't. Heh, that explains a lot."  
"Oh, this is just so cool. Look down there! A toy train!"

He stared at her, his eyes filled with love. He settled back in his seat, relaxed and enjoyed the show of watching Shizuku having the time of her life.


	8. Chapter 7 Traveling Through Time

**Chapter Seven– Traveling Through Time  
**

The container ship Shimpei Shu Maru of 32,000 tons was two days out of Kobe bound for Piraeus. She was steering a course south west through the Tsushima Strait. The weather was clear, visibility excellent. Cloud cover was five tenths. On the bridge there was little to do but monitor the compass, the sweeping arm of the radar and the engine revolutions. The first officer had time to spare. He glanced up at the sky. A jet was up there, high, high up, a white dot drawing a contrail behind it. He wondered where it might be going and he idly envied the tourists on board.

The girl continued to stare out of the window. She'd hardly moved in the last hour, this was all so new, so fresh, she didn't want to miss anything. Between the fluffy white clouds tens of thousands of feet below, slices of sea were visible. A ship was there, it was not much more than a speck, the straight brushstroke of its wake behind it. She sat back from the window, looked around for something to hold her interest. The boy beside her had put on a pair of personal stereo headphones. His eyes were closed. She rummaged through the magazines in the seat back pouch in front of her and selected one.

It was some hours later. The freshness and wonder had worn off. They were sleeping, cuddled together in their seats. Through the porthole-like window to her right the blue sky was a pale cold colour, the colour the sky takes on on sunny crisp winter days. Towards the top of the window the sky was darker, the deep velvet blue of the upper atmosphere. Shizuku's head rested on Seiji's shoulder; he in turn laid his head on top of hers. They were under a blanket provided by the airline. Many passengers were now sleeping, some read. A couple of stewardesses moved slowly along the aisles checking that all was OK.

In the galley the immaculately dressed Japan Airlines stewardesses spoke and clattered about at work. Hot meals were placed on trolleys and wheeled down the aisles. Passengers endured the ritual of airline food, there was something of the aspect of feeding battery hens in a shed. Nevertheless, to break the boredom if nothing else, they ate and drank and chattered, making the usual jokes about the quality and presentation of the meals.

The aircraft cruised effortlessly high above the clouds. There was a slight warmth to the colours of the sky now, to the white paintwork of the plane's side. Seiji's eyes were closed. His head nodded slightly to the musical beat from his headphones. Shizuku was reading. She had a couple of books on the plastic fold down tray over her lap. She read something then closed her eyes and quietly mouthed a phrase, then checked her book again. Seiji removed his headphones. There was a tinny rendition of a pop song, fleas playing tiny electric guitars. He looked at her.

"What are you reading? Not fairy tales?"

She looked back at him, a look of mild disdain in her eyes, "Mr. Amasawa," she spoke in a school mistress tone, "fairy tales are for children. I, you might have noticed, am not a child. Now this one," she held up the book, "is an Italian phrase book. I'm teaching myself some Italian. And this one…" with her other hand she flipped another book over so the spine and front cover was visible, on it was a picture of the Coliseum, Rome, "…is a geography book – about European cities, the people, their life, industry. Its research for my stories. I want to write stories that describe places accurately – so when people read them they feel they are really there."

"Oooo… sorry for asking!" Seiji stayed on the offensive with a tone of mock sarcasm. "You're really serious about this aren't you?"  
"Well, would you make a violin without wanting it to be the best you'd ever made?" she smiled with her mouth but not her eyes.  
"Hm."  
"This is me, Seiji. It's what I really want to do. I'm like a great big bag of storytelling wrapped up inside a person. Storytelling is the whole of me. It wants to burst out – I can't keep it in."  
"But can you make story writing successful?"  
"What? Make money?" she shrugged, "I suppose so but that's not why I do it. I do it because I love it. Why do you make violins?"

Seiji didn't answer that question. There was a hint of worry showing, something dark and uncertain in his eyes. But something else was in his expression in response to what she'd just said about herself. A look of awe. A stewardess passed along the aisle. Shizuku caught her attention,

"Excuse me."  
"Yes, miss."  
"What time is it please? I think my watch is wrong."  
"It's almost six o'clock, miss. Five to six now."  
"Thanks. Oh, and where are we now – do you know?"  
"Over Crete miss, we should be landing in about ninety minutes."  
"Thank you."  
"That's odd," puzzled Shizuku, "I'm sure it should be dark by now."  
"Time zones," Seiji had spoken from behind closed eyes, from under his headphones.  
"What?"  
"Time zones – you know each country is at a different time because it's on a different part of the earth's surface."  
"Ah! Yes! Time zones. How many have we gone through?"  
Seiji removed his headphones again, "Pffffft… dunno… five or six maybe."  
You could almost see the cogwheels turning in her head, "So we took off about one o'clock… my watch says we've been flying over nine hours… it's actually only six now… yes, five time zones…"  
"Neat, huh?"  
"Yes… like time travel."  
"Kind of, but not really."  
"But if you went really fast, round and round the world… in a space ship…"  
"International Date Line."  
"Ah… right… so only ever twenty-three hours out?"  
"Mmm, something like that."  
"Even so, kind of cool isn't it?"  
"It is now. But not after you land. Going west isn't a problem but when we travel east against the sun we lose about eleven hours or something and your body clock will get all messed up. Day should be night and you can't stay awake. It's not nice. When we get to Italy your watch will say only about seven hours have passed but to your body it'll feel like twice that. You'll see."

She reached down to her fold out table, picked up a small note book and wrote in it with her propelling pencil.

"What's that?"  
"Note book."  
"Right. For a moment there I thought it was a jellyfish."  
She looked at him as though he were an idiot, "_What?_"  
"Doesn't matter."  
"Oh, _this?_"  
"Uh-huh."  
"Ideas. Story ideas. If something cool or odd or just interesting happens I scribble it down."  
"Agh!" he slapped his forehead in mock revelation  
"What?"  
"I can't stand it! Let me outta here! I'm trapped on a plane with a nutcase!"  
"_Baka!_ I can be inspired by the smallest things – time travel round the world by a fast spaceship – just looking out this window at the ships and islands below," she pointed downward with a finger, "I never know when a tiny seed will germinate and suddenly a whole story will pop into my head – so I keep notes. For later."  
Seiji edged away from her a little in mock concern, "Right. I see…."  
"Seiji! Yes you will see! Just you wait! In years to come when my time travel novel is known the world over, I'll remind you of this conversation!"  
"Yeah, I'm sure you will."


	9. Chapter 8 Descent to Milan

**Chapter Eight – Descent to Milan  
**

It was late afternoon, the light on the clouds and along the side of the 747 was warm and golden. The cloud tops were far below, foaming like dreams. The plane had been cruising over ten hours now. In the cabin passengers were crashed out as people always are at the end of long haul flights. The stewardesses still looking as crisp and fresh as the minute they dressed this morning, went about their jobs. How do stewardesses do that? I don't know. Maybe airlines have invented the android and not told anyone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Suzuki again. We are about to commence our descent to Linate airport and we should be landing on time at 7:35p.m. The temperature in Milan this evening is currently 27 degrees. There has been some rain and a storm is just leaving the area to the west. I'm going to take us in a descent to the north behind the storm front. We may encounter some mild turbulence but this is quite usual at this time of year. We will however have the seat belt warning lights on but please be assured that this is quite normal."

His words were reinforced by a gentle gong sound – a "bong" and red lights came on the panels above the passengers heads. There was a befuddled scrambling for seat belts. Seiji buckled his belt closed. Shizuku already had hers locked and was leaning forward to look down at the clouds. The light outside had turned a beautiful pink. Shizuku's eyes opened in wonder as she looked down at the cloud tops which swirled like a vast strawberry mousse.

"Oh… so beautiful…"

The plane began its descent behind the storm front, its nearside was lit up golden from the sinking sun. Slowly the port wing lifted, the starboard wing dropped and the big jet went round in a gentle descending starboard turn. As the turn began the sunlight caught the first porthole on its side and it sparkled golden like a jewel. Then the turning fuselage caught the sunlight on the second window. Then the third. The glow faded from the first window and the reflection of the setting sun ran down the side of the big jet window by window as it curved round. If jet planes could dance, the 747 would have been the biggest ballet dancer ever. The motion was quite beautiful, graceful, the banking turn went on and on, down, down toward the clouds.

There were rattles and bumps. Turbulence. Shizuku uttered a small "Oh," of surprise and held her seat armrests. She swallowed hard, shaking her head as the rising air pressure hurt her ears. She reached over to the seat back in front of Seiji and pulled out a bottle of mineral water, unscrewed the cap and took a couple of swallows.

"Urh, my ears."

To her right grey and purple clouds skimmed past the window.

Grasses and shrubs grew on the overgrown bank. Evening was coming. It wasn't here yet but this was the time of day when small animals came out to eat, rabbits, mice, voles. Dusk would be on them soon and the night hunters would be out, so the vegetarian creatures made the most of this aperture in the days cycle to feed quickly. On the grassy bank was a small growth of wild flowers, their pale blue petals wafted in the breeze.

Higher up towards the top of the grassy bank a larger shrub moved and a black nose peeped out from behind it. The wet nose sniffed. Attached to the nose a pointed dog-like snout came into view. The owner of the nose and snout revealed herself from behind the bush. A female fox, a young vixen. Her coat was a lustrous reddish brown, her underside a tawny cream. She was healthy, alert, sniffing, moving slowly. Her big dog ears turned picking up any noises that might indicate danger or dinner. Suddenly she stopped, ears upright, her head turned about. Alerted, she considered some new information.

At the very top of the grassy bank there was a wire fence, its diamond mesh making a pattern across the view that beyond it revealed a tarmac runway. Two rows of marker lights stretched away down the runway edges into an impossible distance. Suddenly the bank and fence were ablaze with bright white light, every petal, every blade of grass burned a shadow behind it and these shadows all moved slowly from left to right like a time lapse sequence of shadows cast by the sun. The vixen's eyes stared momentarily into the light, she was pinned in place in surprise. The bright light went out, darkness returned to the bank. A colossal shadow passed over and the vixen bolted away into the undergrowth. Beyond the fence the runway was painted by the moving pool of bright light from the powerful landing headlights of the approaching plane.

Shizuku, as we would expect, looked out her window, her face might have been glued to it. She was wide-eyed. Every object below, houses, cars, held her attention. Every little thing was wonderful. Seiji wore his headphones. Eyes shut he bobbed his head, tapped his fingers and wore a rapturous expression.

The shadow that spooked the fox moved over the bank and toward the runway. A demonic roar was the final confirmation the vixen needed to know that she should be somewhere else, _now_. The 747 passed over the airport boundary fence, four sets of undercarriage wheels each as big as a truck, descending like the talons of a giant eagle. Suddenly the whole world was full of plane, its powerful presence filled this place, nose wheels, fuselage, tail, fat roaring engines. It was angled back in a steep descent, nose high, bleeding off speed and descending belly first. There were red white and green navigation and warning lights festooned around it like Christmas tree lights. A big red flashing light under it's belly, a white light on top behind the cockpit, another on the top of the tail fin. Red and green lamps on the wingtips. The pool of illumination from its headlamps now lit up the runway a quarter of a mile ahead.

Shizuku was watching the ground coming up to meet her, mother earth welcoming her child back.

"Almost down."

Underneath the fat body of the 747 the red flashing warning light rotated spilling blood red illumination onto the scene every few seconds. The big black bulk of the lower fuselage came down. The runway surface rolled under the plane, a white painted broken line down the centre. Had you been looking down through a window in the underside of the plane you could have been fooled into thinking the plane was still and the world beneath it was spinning past, like a Scooby-Doo cartoon where the monsters chased them down a long corridor and the same doorway and suit of armour kept going by.

The runway surface was bruised by numerous dark skid marks where mother earth had greeted tens of thousands of plane tyres on ten thousand other days. Lower now and slower. Suddenly the port undercarriage assembly made contact with the ground and there was a puff of smoke from the tyres and a sharp squeal of protest from the rubber, a second later the centre pair of legs and the starboard undercarriage hit down with further squirts of smoke. These big jets carry their main undercarriage in pivoting assemblies and so far only the rearmost axles had contacted. But now, as the speed fell off and the plane could no longer fly, gravity gripped it and held it down in a final embrace. All four main undercarriage assemblies slammed hard down onto the tarmac, all sixteen tyres were down, with more squeals as the rubber instantly heated up.

Immediately there was a cataclysmic roar as the four engines had their thrust reversed, the sound intolerable. Shizuku watched the angle of the runway surface change as the giant sank down and the nose wheel came to the ground. An electrical whirring announced that long slats of air dams were extending up from the wing to further brake the plane. The cabin interior was filled with rattles and bounces from the motion of the plane. The roar of the reversing jet engines was uncomfortably loud even in the cabin. Both teenagers bodies snapped forwards against their seatbelts as the plane slowed. A nearby passenger made a sound of alarm. Shizuku put one hand forward against the seat in front to brace herself. Seiji turned to look at her, she stared back, her face showing a mixture of excitement and fear. Seiji spoke loudly, he still had his headphones on,

"Woooo-hooooo! Isn't it great?"  
"Oh my god!"

Even though it didn't seem possible, the roar of engines got louder. The runway passed beneath the plane's belly more slowly now. The engines and air brakes had brought the jet under control. The aircraft reached the end of the runway. It slowed to some twenty miles an hour and turned off the end onto a taxiing lane. There were white flood lamps mounted at the base of the tail fin. The red Japan Airlines logo on the tail, a red crane and rising sun badge as tall as two houses, was lit up by an oval of white light. Shizuku beamed,

"Wow, fantastic. That was incredible. You should have told me flying was like this!"  
Seiji took off his headphones, "And spoil the surprise? I _love_ flying, its great, no matter how many times I go. As landings go, though, that was a pretty hard one. I'd give it a cream rating of nine out of ten."  
"Cream rating?"  
"Hm. A rating of seven or eight is exciting. A nine is scary. A ten and you cream your pants."  
"Seiji! That's disgusting!"  
"Oh come on! Where's your sense of fun?"  
"Seiji Amasawa, sometimes you're beyond redemption."  
"But funny."  
She smiled at him, "Cream rating, really…", she lowered her eyes and looked down.

He bent his head forward beneath hers and looked up at her,

"You're smiling. I can see you."  
She looked at him, she was, despite herself, smiling, "You're… you're just…"  
"What? Handsome? Sexy? Intelligent?"  
"You're just a typical… smelly… _boy_."  
"But you love me really."  
"Sometimes I wonder why."

The plane rolled slowly towards the airport building. The sun was setting. It taxied carefully into a parking bay and the engines shut down. Ground vehicles scurried around. A truck with a staircase attached to it drove slowly up to the main cabin door, baggage cars approached. All the panoply of a modern airport started to work efficiently.

At the plane's exit door a stewardess ushered the passengers off. Shizuku and Seiji stood in a queue of people. The girl reached the doorway.

"Thank you. Goodbye."  
"Thank you, miss, safe journey."

She stepped out onto the top of the staircase. The glow of the setting sun lit her face and hair. She took a big breath of Italian air.

"Ahhh. Hello Italy!"


	10. Chapter 9 Arrival

**Chapter Nine – Arrival  
**

Milano Linate airport was old, it had existed pre-war and in the fifties and sixties had been enlarged to cope with the air traffic of those days. However the site was cramped and although it could accept large jets there was limited room for servicing many of them and limited administration space. So the larger Malpensa airport to the west of Milan and further from the city centre had taken the status of the main North Italy international terminal. Linate was these days used mostly for domestic flights. However the march of time and the increase in air travel had caught up even at Malpensa and that airport was undergoing a major expansion with the construction of a second terminal. During this work a number of international flights were routinely diverted to the older, smaller Linate and so it was pure chance that brought Shizuku to this place tonight and from where, on her onward journey something peculiar would happen that even today, years later, she cannot explain.

The large room was filled with passengers. There was marble flooring and walls with concrete pillars at intervals. A hard, cold place. Somewhere designed not to be attractive, a place designed so you wouldn't want to linger. Several slow moving queues snaked across the room toward a row of desks in glass booths along one wall. Exits to an adjoining room were behind the row of booths. Signs above the desks read "Controllo Passaporti." The people in the queues for passport control looked for the most part to be at the limit of their endurance. Tired and fed up, it was a queue of zombies.

Seiji and Shizuku stood side by side. In close up their faces showed no emotion. Seiji looked slowly to his left then a moment later back in front of him again. The couple had a luggage trolley with them, their hand luggage on it. They both looked shattered, ready for sleep. Then the upper half of a blue suitcase slide past in front of them. After a gap of a few seconds a big black hold-all slid by, then a red suitcase. There was no reaction on the couple's faces. Seiji turned his head left again. Two men in suits walked behind them in the background. They both pulled weekend bags on wheels. More luggage slid past on the conveyor. Other passengers, equally animated, waited to either side. A sign hung from the ceiling. In several languages it showed "Ritiro Bagagli" or "Baggage Reclaim." Seiji and Shizuku were experiencing one of the true great highlights of air travel. The fun of having other people crowd in and push you. Seeing others gleefully get their bags first and get to the front of the taxi queue. Of that special feeling of worrying about whether your luggage is now on its way back to Tokyo. Modern air travel has improved considerably but clearly baggage reclaim is such a renowned feature of the experience that airports around the world retain it, probably out of pure nostalgia for good times now past.

The man in the cheap dark suit with greasy hair and a thin moustache held the card sign almost secretively. Perhaps he didn't want his passengers to see it. That way he could wait a while, convince himself they'd missed him and go home to watch the football. The piece of cardboard had AMASAWA printed on it by hand in black marker pen. He held back toward the rear of the group of other taxi drivers. When he wasn't driving a taxi he looked like he might be a used car salesman. Or a mafia debt collector. Seiji came through the crowd pushing the trolley, the girl holding onto him. There is something surprising about the human brain. It can respond to and recognize certain things very easily, rapidly. A familiar face in a crowd for example, hearing your own name spoken quietly some way away, and in this case catching the smallest glimpse of your own name written down. Seiji saw the letters "AMA" on the piece of card at the back of the group of drivers. The mafia debt collector had been found out, now he'd miss the football. Seiji went toward him, he encouraged Shizuku,

"Here's our driver, c'mon, let's go."


	11. Chapter 10 Shizuku's Vision

**Chapter Ten – Shizuku's Vision  
**

The taxi crept through traffic away from the airport and toward the city centre. The traffic drove on the right and this was strange enough. It was growing dark now, the sun had set. The rain had left Milan's streets wet. In the gloom of the storm the streetlamps had come on. Now they bled across the roads, the traffic lights wept. Shizuku, behind the driver, wound down her window and looked out. The fresh smell of recent rain raised her spirit. The strangeness of this new continent was enhanced by the weather, the odd quality of the post-storm light and her exhaustion. She was tired but also eager to see her first Italian city. Trouble is this area of Milan was a poor advertisement for Italy as a whole. Factories went by, warehouses with lorries parked outside, anonymous office buildings. The light industrial quarter of Milan was pretty crappy; as uninspiring as the light industrial quarter of everywhere else in the world.

"Seiji, was this taxi sent by the school? Does it take us all the way to Cremona?"  
"No, oh no. We're catching a train. Grandpa arranged the taxi transfer, students have to make their own way to the school. The train ride is about an hour so you can take a nap then."  
"Uhnnn, 'Kay. I just wanna be there already."

She turned her attention back out of the window. The car was entering a city centre area now and there were derelict and boarded up factories. It looked like a site earmarked for land clearance and redevelopment. For a reason she did not understand Shizuku suddenly became alert, awake, here was a place with a secret. Her eyes widened and she had a strange feeling that she knew this place. How could that be?

"Hey, did we drive in a circle?"  
"What?"  
"It feels as though I've been here before. The driver isn't doubling back to make more money or something is he?"  
Seiji's voice showed concerned, "I don't think so."  
Shizuku was hanging her head out the window now. Seiji spoke to the driver "Signore – uh - sa dov'è la stazione?"  
"Si, si."  
He turned back to Shizuku, "He says the station is this way."

When the girl spoke again there was something altogether new in her voice, a sound of uncertainty, of fear even,

"There's a canal up here."  
"Really?" Seiji wasn't that interested.  
"No, I mean I know there's a canal up here, and a stone bridge over it."  
"What are you on about? Are you writing a book aloud now?"  
"Seiji, this is weird. I know that this street crosses a canal by a stone bridge. There's factories down below. I _know_. I've been here before."  
"Could be, lots of factories round here."  
Shizuku spoke to herself, a little afraid, "What's happening to me?" she addressed the driver, "Tassista? Mi scusi, ci sono dei canali qui?"  
"Si, si, ce n'è uno vecchio – abbandonato?"  
"Did he say old?"  
"Here it is, what did I tell you?" She gripped the top of the wound down window with both hands.

The taxi passed a last derelict brick warehouse and drove onto a bridge. It was wide with filthy plate girder side walls painted a dull rusty red. It was dark now. There were streetlights along the edge of the bridge. The car slowed down, in fact the whole world slowed down, time was unravelling. Well, no, time wasn't _unravelling_, but it's hard for me to describe what was really going on. Shizuku when she speaks to me about this can't say for certain what happens when she has these experiences. She says that in a way time splits, Shizuku-time separates from everyone else's time and that split allows her to see through it. Like a tear in a piece of cloth, her on one side, us on the other. She glimpses through that tear and sees other times. She doesn't understand it any more than I expect you to from that description, all she does is know it happens, because it happened twice in Italy and has happened twice more since then.

The taxi passed out from under a pool of lamp light into an unlit area on the middle of the bridge. Shizuku stared at the side of the bridge, stared beyond it to see what lay below. Her hair blew in the wind but because time for her was stopping, and the world was stopping with it, each strand lifted and waved in slow motion. There came a moment when everything froze and time no longer existed. Suddenly her face, the side of the car and the road it was travelling along were lit by full sunshine. It wasn't like a light switch coming on but the light increased gradually as though a door was slowly opening. The area of light began on her face and spread like an ink-stain encompassing the car, then the road surface, then the side of the bridge. As the road surface and bridge side were illuminated, they changed. It was a hazy light, the kind you get on cloudy summer days, diffuse and gentle. Shizuku was frightened. _Oh. Oh, my God…_ she couldn't speak because time no longer existed and her brain couldn't send electrical signals to her muscles. Her spirit however, was more alive than she'd ever known before.

Outside now, for her, it was full daylight. The bridge the taxi was frozen to was suddenly surfaced with stone cobbles. The balustrade was stone pillars, ornately carved and with a stone handrail. There were no streetlights any more. Below the bridge was a wide clear canal, to the right, running alongside the canal, coming out from underneath the bridge, a dirt roadway. Travelling away from the bridge along the roadway was an old fashioned brown lorry made up of a tractor unit and a flat bed trailer. It jostled down the unmade road raising dust.

To the right of the road was a wire fence and beyond that an overgrown derelict plot. But it was to the left of the canal that Shizuku's attention was really drawn. Factories lined the canal. They were not derelict but alive, working. They were of tin construction and painted pale green. One section had a saw-toothed northlight roof of glass. At the far end a tall old style brick chimney vented dirty smoke into a sky of hazy blue. Along the canal-facing wall of one building was painted a name: PICCOLO SpA. Shizuku's mouth couldn't gape at the vision but her mind did.

Inside the taxi, Seiji leaned forwards to peer out of Shizuku's window. For him the world wasn't standing still, for him the taxi had almost left the bridge already. For him Shizuku had already pulled her head back inside the window. He saw nothing strange outside, just a dirty steel bridge parapet, derelict factories. Down below in the dark he glimpsed an abandoned canal, a muddy ditch full of weeds and shopping trolleys. The roadway beside it was choked with undergrowth. I don't think Seiji even realised it had once been a road. To the right there was a clear concrete space with a modern steel framed single storey warehouse on it. Lines of modern trucks stood there, trailers backed up to loading bays. In the distance to the left all was dereliction, the skeletons of old factories. He tried to articulate his concern,

"What?"

Shizuku didn't hear him because for her he hadn't spoken yet. It would be another ten seconds in her future before he moved and another five after that when he would speak. She continued to look down from the bridge in daylight. A motor barge came out from under it, its old engine made a low and slow erratic chugging. She could just glimpse the bow come into view. The barge had tarpaulin covered hatches. By now the brown lorry had reached the factory. Dust hung in the air along the unmade road.

She thought the sun was setting, but no, it was fading, the light was fading. She could still hear the barge's motor but the day it existed in was leaving, the sound became drawn out and thin, weak and flavourless, like tea made with too much water. The light faded, first from the bridge then the roadway then the side of the car until finally only Shizuku's face was warmed by the summer sun of sixty years ago. Her spirit cried, _No, don't go._ But the light was gone. The harsh light of a streetlamp lit her face casting deep shadow under her brows, nose and chin. The breeze of a rainy Milan evening blew her hair. The taxi passed off the bridge and the scene was cut off by a building. Shizuku cried out in shock, the way you'd sometimes shiver. _Someone passed over my grave _is the phrase she used to describe it.

"What?" asked Seiji, and this time (although in reality it was the first and only time he'd said it) she heard him.

He looked at her with concern. She was still looking back behind the taxi. She'd let go of the car door and turned to look out the rear window. It was dark back there, only streetlamps. She turned round and looked down, she clasped her hands tightly in her lap. A breeze came in the open window and ruffled her hair. There was wetness at her lower eyelids.

"What was it?"  
"I… I'm not sure. It was daytime, a long time ago. There was a boat on the canal, men working in the factories."

She turned to him,

"Can jet lag cause hallucinations Seiji?"  
"Not that I know of," she looked terrible, his heart went out to her, "Come here, you must be exhausted."

He reached out for her and she crumpled into his arms, lifting her clasped hands to her chest in a worried knot. She rested her forehead on his shoulder.

Outside it was just another summer evening in Milan.


	12. Chapter 11 Tony and Marco

**Chapter Eleven – Tony and Marco  
**

Milano Stazione Centrale was an example of the confident works of the great days of the early twentieth century, when railway companies were among the most powerful corporations in the world and money was no object. This station was built in the heroic style, an imposing edifice of north Italian limestone. In its day it must have been magnificent. But that day was long gone, today people flew, or drove their cars. Most of the traffic into Milan's central railway station now was commuters. At this time of the evening the surge of the commuter tide was ebbing and the station was becoming quiet. It was at this hour, and a little later in the night when the ghosts of its great past would come out and remind the few travelers who used it of the changes, the differences between what once was and is now.

The main hall of Stazione Centrale was a church-like vault, tall arches and columns lifted up a ceiling of Art Deco splendour and intensity. But now these beautiful vaults, dusty, cobwebbed, belonged only to the pigeons. The birds looked down on the life of this station which was concentrated into the lowest ten feet of this once impressive space. Ticket booths, coffee bars, newspaper stalls, their garish illuminated signs stopped at an apparently agreed invisible line above which was only gloom and the derelict past.

Outside, the city municipal authorities still made an effort. The exterior of the building had been chemically cleaned in recent years and floor mounted floodlights now illuminated the frontage, an impressive colonnade facing the _Piazza Duca D'Aosta_. A black taxi drew up at this colonnade, its tyres splashed through a puddle. Seiji and Shizuku got out, their luggage was unloaded and the formalities of tipping the driver were taken care of. The driver got back in the car and drove away. While the girl stood outside the colonnade, the boy went in. She stood inert, without energy, her face downcast. A moment later he returned with a luggage trolley and loaded their bags onto it. He took her hand, placed it onto the handle of the trolley,

"Just hold on here, I'll push. Just make sure you don't let go."  
"Sure."  
"Come on, let's go, I need to find us some tickets."

Seiji pushed the trolley inside. In the centre of the booking hall he stopped and spoke gently to the girl. He left her, a forlorn cameo while he went to the ticket booths. Upon his return she'd not moved an inch. He pushed the trolley towards the platforms, she walked beside him, holding onto the trolley handle and moving her feet but doing nothing else. They came out onto the concourse at the buffer stops of the platforms, Seiji looked up at a row of television screens. He needn't have, an announcer told him all he needed to know:

"Il Treno IR2663 per Lodi – Piacenza – Cremona – Mantua – Padua – Venezia. Treno IR2663, è in partenza tra cinque minuti, al binario quattro."  
"That's our train."

They walked down a platform, passengers stood about, the neon lights mounted under the awning cast merciless hard light over the whole scene. To the left was a train.

"Here's our train."  
"This carriage. Please."  
"Are you sure?"  
"I just need to sit down…"  
"OK. Here."

He pushed a rubber button and the doors folded open with a hiss of compressed air.

"Go on."

She climbed up.

"What about the bags."  
"Don't worry about that, find a seat."

The passenger compartment was not very welcoming. Brick red plastic covered padded seats, sand coloured walls that looked like linoleum. Aluminium luggage racks. Harsh lighting. A large window with rounded corners and aluminium strip trim. Just the place you wouldn't want to sleep for a journey. Shizuku entered. She collapsed on one of the bench seats, sat upright for a moment then slowly leaned over and lay on her side, completely drained. With grunts of effort Seiji came in. He put their two small bags on the luggage racks, then went back outside and dragged their big bags into the compartment. They filled most of the floor space. He climbed over the bags to the window seat next to Shizuku and sat down. He glanced at her. She was already asleep. He leaned forward, unzipped his rucksack and pulled out a tee shirt, folded it and leaning awkwardly over her so as not to put pressure on her, he carefully lifted her head and laid the folded tee shirt on the seat. He let her head down gently onto the makeshift pillow. She moaned quietly.

"Mmmm…"

He took off his jacket and laid it over her. For a moment he sat and looked at her. He placed one hand on her shoulder and allowed himself a quiet moment to commune with her spirit. Finally he got himself comfortable at his window seat and studied the view outside. His reflection stared back at him. He had hoped that in Italy he'd be able to escape the thing that fretted inside him, but it had chased him here, his situation had chased him across the miles and even now he could not rest. The baggage had come with him. So he sat in the quiet of the night and turned his problems over again in his mind, familiar problems that refused to be solved. He took comfort in feeling her presence beside him. Maybe that was the key, to tell her? The locomotive horn honked and the train began to move.

The railway line through Lodi and Piacenza followed a double line of tracks and kept down in the broad flat valley of the River Po. Once beyond the dirt and depression of the city fringes fields came down on either side, and olive and citrus groves, and farms, and intriguing little villages clustered around small churches with pretty _campinali_. Seiji watched the passing countryside for a while and a little later the gentle motion of the train, like a baby's cradle, lulled him and he slept. In sleep his problems left him. But in sleep the dream came, always the same dream. He was always alone on the hilltop and always the shadow army of little men - _Koropokkur_ - crowded round him and wouldn't let him move. He wondered who the army represented. His father? Himself? School versus violin making? He could never decide which. A train passed on the other track, a big dirty slow diesel locomotive drawing a long line of heavy oil tanker cars. The freight train rumbled by his window. Disturbed, he opened his eyes and watched the tank cars slide by. He'd been dreaming but he couldn't recall the dream. He could hear the freight train rattle and its axle boxes screech and complain. There was a faint honk in the distance and it was gone. He closed his eyes again. This time, mercifully the dream did not come and for a while he was at peace.

Milan was an hour behind them now and the train slowed around a curve and onto a long steel girder bridge. The train rumbled slowly over the Po and entered Cremona on a long right hand bend through the industrial quarter on the west side of the city. Approaching the station which lay to the north of the old town the train slowed more and crept carefully across a winding route over many tracks, its wheel flanges screeching and ringing. It entered Cremona station, a yellow painted platform building to the left, an awning above. The usual station clutter of lights, posters and signs. The train slowed to a crawl and drew up at the platform. There was a squeal of brakes. A station official walked along the platform.

"Cremona. Cre-mo-na!"

A door opened with a hiss. Seiji appeared dragging a bag. He went back inside. Shizuku came out and stood on the platform. She had the hand luggage. Seiji reappeared with the second bag. The official on the platform blew his whistle, he glanced left and right along the train and raised a white lamp, a signal of 'all clear' to the driver. The locomotive horn honked again briefly and with a hiss and a whine the train began to move. No-one else had got off. The train accelerated away. As it left the platform the red flashing tail lamp marked its curving route out of the station and into the distance. The clackety-clack of wheels on rails receded into the summer night. The boy and girl were left in silence with just the whirring of cicadas and the colour of the signal lights.

"How are you doing?"  
"Mmm… 'Kay I guess. Is it far?"  
"Yeah, it's the other side of town. But it's not that big a town. Shall I call a taxi?"  
"We should try and save our money. I think I can make it."  
"That bag is gonna kill us."  
"It does have wheels you know. Not very good ones, but at least we don't have to carry it."  
"Wheels? You never mentioned wheels before."  
"Sorry, was I supposed to? They're little ones. Recessed. Not surprised you missed them."  
"Damn, the bag has wheels. The damn bags got wheels and I've been struggling to haul it on and off trolleys for hours!"  
"Sorry. I thought it was kind of obvious."

Seiji put a hand to the back of his head, and ran his fingers through his hair,

"OK, OK. We're both exhausted. Let's not get into a stupid fight about a bag with wheels. Deal?"  
"Deal."  
"Can you pull it?"  
"Think so. Keep an eye on me. If I'm suddenly not there you know I've given up."  
"OK, we can do this. Just grit your teeth and think of the nice soft warm bed that's waiting for you."  
"Right," she straightened her shoulders, "I'm ready, let's go."

Seiji hauled his huge rucksack onto his back. His smaller rucksack clipped to its front straps and sat on his chest, a sensible balanced arrangement. Shizuku adjusted her pink shoulder bag and picked up the front handle of the huge military bag. They set off. They turned right out of the station onto an overbridge that spanned the tracks, and headed up into the old city. I'm not going to tell you all the details of that walk as it took them the best part of thirty minutes and at more than one point Shizuku almost gave up. She tells me she would have if it hadn't been for him. His kindness, his words, and later his threats and anger made her so bitter and cross with herself that she forced herself on. She remembered a piazza, it must have been very late even though people still sat outside cafes, talking, laughing, smoking, drinking. Oh how she wanted to sit down and rest with them. But she knew that if she stopped she would never get up again. Always that summer day in Milan before the war was in her mind. She had no answers, she didn't know what had happened. Perhaps in the morning she would think about it more, see it differently.

"This way."

Seiji turned down a short flight of steps. Shizuku followed him slowly, her bag clunking down each step; they were going downhill now, they seemed to have climbed up from the station to a high point in town and were descending again, back toward the river. She glanced up at the buildings. They were very old and had rendered walls, stucco in cream and pastel shades. Attractive tiles enamelled in blue and white carried the building numbers and street names. The alley they were walking down ended at a small courtyard perhaps forty feet square. It had a cobbled surface, and the left side was slightly higher than the right. In the centre was an old stone horse trough, and next to it an ancient pump for fresh water. Across the end of the courtyard in front of them was a low building - stables or a coach house. It had a single story at courtyard level and a smaller story above with dormer windows set into the tiled roof. To the left was a larger old building with three steps up to a wide green front door. A name board above the door invited the traveller to stay at the HOTEL ALFONSO. The name board was illuminated by two old fashioned wall lamps on curved cast brackets. The building on the right and lower side of the courtyard was much more interesting. An old house of several stories, at first storey level there was a balcony running along the whole frontage. It had stone pillars along the balustrade and under this balcony the overhang was covered in by stone arches, making a colonnade. Apart from the hotel nameboard lamps there was just one other source of illumination in the courtyard, a similar lamp inside the colonnade above the door of the big house. They stopped on the threshold of the courtyard. Seiji sighed,

"Well, this is it."  
"Oh, thank goodness for that. I've just about had it."

They stood for a moment and looked at the courtyard. It had the feel of a farmyard in some ways although probably it was originally a coaching inn, the building ahead being the stables and the house to the right being either rooms or a merchants house. Under the colonnade the house had a big wooden arched door studded with black iron boltheads. Seiji stopped before the door and checked his watch.

"Hm, eleven o'clock. Well, nothing else for it."

He pulled an old metal rod bell pull. A bell jangled faintly. Shizuku looked at a brass plaque beside the bell pull. It read ADRIANO GUARNIERI and underneath SCUOLA DI VIOLINI.

"Nice old place."

A few moments went by. She leaned her forehead on his shoulder. A light came on inside and the door opened. An old man with white stubble on his head and on his chin wearing a collarless shirt, dark trousers and some odd kind of knitted waistcoat opened the door.

"Si?"  
Seiji went for it in his broken Italian, "Sono, Seiji Amasawa per… hmm... per la scuola di violini." He seemed to just grab the wording off the sign, it probably wasn't right but the mangled Italian worked.  
"Ah! Signorino Amasawa! Prego, entrate pure!"

The strange old man extended an arm in welcome. Seiji turned to Shizuku,

"Well, this is where I say goodnight. You're in the internationally acclaimed five star Hotel Alfonso, remember? You'll be OK?"  
"Sure, go on, you must be shattered. I'll see you in the morning. What time does school start?"  
"Nine. Come over a few minutes before."  
"I'll try, if I can wake up."  
"Come here."

She stepped close to him. They hugged briefly.

"Love you," he said  
"Mmmm, me too."  
"You were brilliant tonight. I'm proud of you."  
"Don't be silly, if it hadn't been for you I'd be asleep on that train still, somewhere miles away by now."  
"Go on, or he'll get cross, the caretaker is a bit mad."  
"OK, bye."  
"Signorina?" the old man was waiting. He'd expected a Japanese boy but not a girl as well.  
"Yes. Ah… si. Tsukishima. Shizuku Tsukishima. L'Hotel?" she pointed behind her.  
"Ah! Signorina Soo-kee-sheema," he considered her for a moment, "Per favore," he held out an arm indicating she should follow him, "Si, si, da questa parte, Signorina."

Shizuku followed the old man across the courtyard and up the Hotel Alfonso's steps. He opened the door and went in. She followed, struggling for one last time with the Monster Bag of Exhaustion. A light was on above a reception desk. Shizuku's eyes opened wide. It was like stepping back forty years in time. The reception desk was a huge polished lump, like a bar counter, on it was an ancient cash register, shelves behind were full of keys, letters in pigeon holes, books and junk, a musty hessian mat on the polished tiled floor in front. Along the front of the reception desk faded posters were glued, announcing music recitals and art events long gone. To the right was a darkened dining room, she could just glimpse tables with white cloths. To the other side was a door marked "PRIVATO" and a narrow staircase. The old man stopped at the counter. Behind it was a huge fat bald man. He was simply vast. He wore a crumpled white shirt, a red checked apron that looked like it had blood stains splashed down it and a huge grin. The dome of his head, his temples, his neck dripped with sweat. If sweating was an Olympic sport, he'd be a potential gold medallist. The white haired old man spoke to him,

"Buona sera Antonio, c'è una signorina a nome tuo. Il nome è Soo-kee-sheema."  
The fat man looked at Shizuku, "Signorina, buona sera!"

His huge wet face split open even wider. It didn't seem possible that his grin _could_ get wider but it did. If he were to open his mouth as well the top of his head would be in danger of coming off. When angry this man was probably the scariest man in the world, but wearing this maniacal grin he appeared full of life and totally approachable. Shizuku bowed low,

"Buona sera signore."

The fat man came out from behind the counter with surprising speed and bowed low in his turn before Shizuku,

"Ah, bene, signorina Soo-kee-sheema!" he cleared his throat uncertainly, and spoke in English, "Do. You. Speak. English?"  
Shizuku was taken aback, "Yes. Yes. A little."  
"Eccellente! My name is Piscotti, Antonio Piscotti. But please," he made a welcoming sweeping gesture with open arms, "call me Tony!"  
"Mr. Tony. Good evening."  
The old man spoke, "Antonio mi scusi, buonanotte."  
"Buonanotte Fabrizio!" called Tony in response and the old man shuffled to the door. Shizuku spoke,  
"Signore Fabrizio?"

Fabrizio stopped, his hand on the door handle. He didn't even turn his head.

"Si?"  
"Molte grazie signore," she bowed low.  
Fabrizio muttered, dismissive with a wave of the hand, "Prego, prego."

He left, shutting the door behind him. Shizuku turned back to the hotel owner, as she assumed he was,

"Please, call me Shizuku."  
"Ohh-Kay!" he practiced the sound, "She-zoo-koo. She-zoo-koo. Very nice name! Very pretty! Come, come, She-zoo-koo – your room?"  
"Yes please. I'm very tired."

Tony looked blank.

"Er…"

Shizuku tried to think of the Italian for 'tired' but in her condition it wouldn't come. She put her palms together and laid one cheek on them, tilting her head.

"Ah… si! Naturalmente," Tony switched to English again, "Please, the stairs. Up, up. Top, top!"

He grabbed a key off the board behind the desk, opened the door marked 'PRIVATO' and yelled through,

"Marco! Bagagli! Camera sedici!"

Shizuku went up the stairs with Tony following.

This room was the cheapest one in the hotel. It wasn't small but with its low ceiling, headroom was restricted and it wasn't suitable for everyone. When Shizuku's father had contacted the hotel whose number Seiji had got from Signore Guarnieri, he'd asked carefully about room prices. And this was what he'd got for his money. An attic room, its walls sloped inwards at the top under the eaves of the roof. It was reached by a steep stair like a ships stair that came up through the floor at one side. The hole in the floor the staircase made was protected by a wooden banister with turned spindles. The wall behind the stairs was closed off by an en-suite shower room. The stairs came up in the far right corner. A single bed had its head against the centre of the left wall. A chest of drawers was beside it with a reading lamp. An electric fan was by the bedside. It whirred silently and swung from side to side. Shizuku climbed the stairs and came into the room, Tony followed her, puffing and panting and sweating profusely. Shizuku looked around at the room and put her pink bag on the bed. Although the room was obviously cheap it was at least clean and presentable.

Facing the other way, towards the front of the room, the wall opposite the shower room, there were a pair of shuttered doors in the centre, to the left was a cheap wardrobe, and to the right a simple but comfortably squishy looking armchair and a small writing table with a lamp on it. Tony approached the shuttered doors and pushed them open. There was a minimal balcony outside, only about a foot deep. Enough to stand on and get some fresh air but no room to sit. It had old curved metal railings painted green. The sounds of a city at night wafted in: traffic, distant music, faint chattering voices. Tony turned and waddled back into the centre of the room. He gestured to the door near the stairs and grinned,

"Bath. Bath. Please signorina."

Shizuku went to the bathroom door and peeked in. She came out.

"Really, it's lovely. Thank you. Er… grazie."  
"Prego."

There was a pause. The two faced each other slightly awkwardly, the language barrier prevented small talk. There was a sound below and Tony smiled again,

"Ah, Marco."

He went to the top of the stairs and Marco could be heard grunting and cursing to drag up Shizuku's monster bag. Eventually a thin spotty youth with black hair came up the stairs. He looked about seventeen and was lean and shy looking. He looked like he'd eaten his last good meal at about the age of twelve. A greater contrast to Tony probably wasn't to be found in the whole of Cremona. He dragged the bag to the middle of the room. Shizuku quickly rummaged in her purse.

"Grazie."

She gave the boy some coins. He took them, looked at them like she'd just given him a dirty sock and went back down stairs cursing under his breath. Tony looked at Shizuku and shrugged.

"Me very sorry."  
"No, it's alright."  
"Buonanotte signorina!", he made to leave  
"Good night Mr. Tony."

The fat man went carefully down the steep stairway. Surprisingly the treads didn't collapse under his weight. Shizuku stood in the middle of the room. She looked about listlessly then dropped her purse on the chest of drawers and sat on the bed. After a few moments she flopped backwards onto it and groaned with exhaustion.


	13. Chapter 12 Art

**Chapter Twelve – Art  
**

It was morning. The city awoke. Red roofs, cream stucco buildings. A bell chimed from a tall _campinale_ – it was an old world sound, reassuring, familiar. In the narrow streets market stall holders pushed barrows of fruit and vegetables. Young men with slicked back hair noised by on _Vespas_. Outside a café the owner washed the pavement down with a hose. A fat middle-aged woman in black went by and they exchanged a greeting. In the dining room of the Hotel Alfonso, Marco looking only a little more presentable than he had done last night, and wearing a white waiter's apron, laid out cutlery.

Shizuku was asleep on her front. She turned onto one side, mumbling. She lay still for a moment then turned onto her back. She opened her eyes,

"Uhhrrr…"

The balcony doors were closed, the shutters angled slightly open allowing sunlight to enter in narrow slices between the slats.

She sat up and slid her legs out of bed. She rested her elbows on her knees and put her forehead in her hands. With an effort she stood up. She wore a mans pyjama jacket but no trousers. She'd been wearing this type of shirt to bed for a while now, three or four months. She'd decided in the spring that she was too old now for kids pyjamas and she'd looked around for something to replace them. The frilly girlie night dresses didn't appeal, but she found these one day when out shopping with her friends. There was something grown up about them, and she liked the statement that wearing them made about herself. The too-long sleeves were rolled back up her forearms. The jacket was a bit short, it just covered her - but only just. She turned and went towards the shutters. She was a mess, there were dark marks under her eyes and her hair was all over the place. She walked sleepily to the shuttered window and pulled a small metal lever at one side, the shutter slats opened like a large blind and sunlight streamed into the room. She shut her eyes,

"Nnnnnn…"

She pushed the shutter doors open and stepped onto the balcony. The sunlight was bright, too bright, oh, no _much_ too bright. She opened her eyes again and looked at the scene without reaction, squinting against the light. Red rooftops were just below her room, more distant buildings, trees and a brown slow moving river in the distance. Farmland beyond the river. To the right a couple of miles upstream she noticed the girders of the railway bridge. She leaned on the metal railing and let the warmth of the sun wake her. _Mmmmm,_ this was no good, the warmth was making her sleepy again… she breathed in deeply.

"Yo! Shizuku! Good morning!"

She looked to her right. A little lower down than her room and in an upper window of the gable end wall of the academy across the courtyard Seiji looked out of a tiny window. She could only see his head, one arm and part of his chest through the tiny window, it must have only been eighteen inches square. He didn't seem to be wearing anything. He waved. She waved back.

"Hi!", she called  
"Hey, I got the honeymoon suite!"  
"Great balcony!"  
"Sleep well?"  
"No, not really! You?"  
"Oh, not bad. Hey, see you in a while!"

His head and arm disappeared. Shizuku went back inside. She walked slowly across the room between the end of the bed and the wooden banisters that protected the stairs, unbuttoning her pyjama jacket as she went. She entered the bathroom and turned on the shower. A moment later a bare arm appeared across the doorway and pushed the door shut.

The stairs that led up to the attic room were concealed behind a door. It was to this door that Shizuku held a key. She came down the ships stair and the click of her key in the door unlocked it. She stepped out into the upstairs corridor of the hotel, carrying her pink bag. She turned, locked the door, tried the handle to make sure it was locked and walked away down the corridor that led to the stairs down to reception.

Outside in the courtyard Seiji was leaning against the school building wall. The hotel door opened and Shizuku came down the steps. He came forward and they met by the horse trough. They held hands, left in right, right in left.

"Morning!" she seemed to have finally woken up  
"Hey, you look amazing, where's the party?"  
"Thanks," she was wearing a short vest-top dress. She spun round for him.  
"How's your room?"  
"Room's fine. I love it, it's all wiggly and secret up at the top of the building right under the roof. I'll show you later. I don't feel great though, I still feel a bit spaced out actually, maybe I slept too hard."  
"Me too. Can you believe that Signore Guarnieri left some study work in the room? I hope all the other students had it as well."  
"When does school start?"  
Seiji looked at his watch, "Uh, about now actually. Sorry," then his face brightened, "But we have only a morning today, a sort of start up session, so I'll be free from about two o'clock."  
"OK."  
"So meet me here again at two, right?"  
"Sure. See you later."

A narrow cobbled street. Shizuku walked slowly, glancing in windows. A young man went past her on a moped. The youth gave her a long look in the way that young men do. She arrived in a small piazza, a church was to one side and she went to stand in front of it. She looked up. The wall of the church was pale grey stone bleached by the hot sun to a colour close to cream. She looked carefully at the windows, the leaded panes, the small niches containing stone statues of saints. Everything about the church was tired and dull, dusty and dying. She tried the door but it was locked. _How can no-one not want to be in such a beautiful old building?_ She turned and walked on. She came to a park, railings bordered the road, and stone pillars stood either side of an entry way. She went in, following dusty paths under pine trees to a wooden bench where she sat in the shade. She waved a hand in front of her face,

"Whew, hot."

She got a book out of her bag and began to read. A dark grey cat walked up to her small, bony and thin.

"Hello cat."

She reached out a hand toward it but the grey tabby shied away and ran off.

"Hm. Must be a stray."

She continued to read. During that morning she walked and walked, she walked everywhere, she soaked up Cremona: every building seemed to weep history; every face she saw spoke it's story to her heart; every sun baked piazza or park gave itself up to her feet, the place welcomed her and she felt at once both so at home as though in a familiar town and also as though an explorer in a hidden land to which no-one before her had come. She ended the morning only wanting more. She made her way back to the hotel.

If you go into the reception area of the Hotel Alfonso and turn right you enter the dining room. You can eat in the cool of that room or, if you wish, you can pass through the open French windows that lead you outside to an enchanting little garden. It's not a large space – between the gable end wall of the hotel and the next building is only about thirty feet or ten metres. Half this width is taken up with a patio of stone flags, the other half with a flower garden that contains two little old twisted olive trees. The wall of the hotel is covered by the most wonderful climbing bougainvillaea, its glorious pink blooms shout at you and you can't help but feel happy. It's out here that Tony places another half-dozen tables. If you sit at one of them and look up, you'll see a small balcony right up at the top of the hotel. I know you can see it from there because I've sat down there myself and checked. This was Shizuku's balcony, facing south toward the river. You can come here at any time of the day but my favourite is breakfast time before the sun climbs around to pour its heat down into this space. At that time of day when it is still cool and shady and the air is fresh, it's a wonderful place to breathe in and start the day with an espresso and a copy of _La Stampa_. During the afternoon Tony will get out his big sunshades and stand one through the hole in the centre of each table. He serves snacks and drinks here and it was here that Shizuku took Seiji on that first afternoon to eat a light lunch.

"Not what you expected then?" she enquired of him,  
"Signore Guarnieri is dropping us in the deep end. It's sink or swim. Can you believe this morning we had to write a history of the Cremona violin making industry _without referring to any books_. I think he's testing us, seeing which of us is suitable to invest more of his time in," he put a hand to his forehead, "My head hurts."  
He sipped his drink, "I don't know how much of me you're going to see in the next three weeks. It's going to be pretty intensive. I'm sorry, maybe you shouldn't have come."  
"No way! I love it here, the town is wonderful. Tony the hotel owner is really nice and I'd much rather sit in a park here and study than in the library back home."  
"And another thing. The class is mixed; there's four Italian guys, a Frenchman, a German, an American and me. The signore teaches in a mixture of Italian and English so as well as learning, I'm having to translate as well… Urrrggnnn…"  
She put her hand over his, "Oh, my poor Seiji. Well after school each day I'll look after you, we'll do whatever you want. I have all day to study or write or explore so the evenings will be your time, OK?"  
"Thanks, appreciate it."

Tony came to their table. How he fitted between the other tables without knocking them aside was something of a mystery.

"Buongiorno She-zoo-koo."  
"Mr. Tony! Hello. This is my friend Seiji Amasawa."  
"Buongiorno signorino."  
"Sir," Seiji bowed.  
"So, how are the tagliatelli, eh?"  
"Very good. It reminds me of noodles a little bit. It's very creamy though, I don't want to get fat."  
Tony laughed, sweat running down his face, "Get fat? On my tagliatelli, ha ha ha, impossible!"

He slapped his huge middle and walked off still laughing.

Later that afternoon Shizuku and Seiji were walking along a fairly busy and narrow road where traffic rattled by. Seiji saw a side street that went uphill to their left. It had shops along it and he suggested they explore. There was no traffic in the smaller street and the droning of cars on the main road at the bottom of the hill was soon left behind. They stopped from time to time to window shop. The street seemed to be mostly antique shops, but full of expensive art. One shop had something large and red low down in the window. They had almost walked past it when Seiji stopped and turned back to look. In the display there were a couple of stone cherubs, a big vase, a painting on an easel, a violin on a stand. In the centre of the window though was a large model of a red aeroplane mounted on a polished wooden stand. It was a single seat red seaplane with a large motor mounted above the wing in front of the pilot. The tail carried the red white and green stripes of the Italian air force. A polished brass plate mounted on the wooden stand read: SAVOIA S.21, 1929.

"What a funny thing to have in an antique shop," observed Shizuku  
"What?"  
"That toy plane."  
"That's not a toy, I expect some devoted model maker spent hours and hours building that."

In close up the aeroplane was clearly indeed a beautiful model, fully rigged and with intricate details inside the cockpit, the wingspan was about three feet or a metre.

"But it's hardly art. Like those statues."  
"Why can't it be art?"

The couple no longer looked at the aeroplane but faced each other, the plane between them visible through the glass.

"Well art is things like painting, statues, even that vase maybe."  
"Sure a craftsman can spend hundreds of hours on a painting or a sculpture. Then some craftsmen make violins… and some make model planes. It's the same thing. Maybe the man who made that was an old pilot, maybe it was the plane he flew in the war, and he wanted to preserve his memories by building a model of it. We can't know anything about the motivations of craftsmen. Just because it looks like a toy doesn't mean it is."

Shizuku bent down and looked carefully at the plane again. Then she stood up.

"Mmmm, maybe."  
"It's more art than my violins are."

She took out her notebook and wrote in it. He rolled his eyes,

"Here we go again."  
"Ssshh, I'm doing art."  
"Fine," he laughed.

They discovered the small piazza – the _Piazza San Giorgio_ - quite by accident. After their disagreement outside the art shop they found that they had stumbled into something of an artisan's quarter, or at least an area of the old city where art and antiques were restored and sold. Two or three streets full of shops and galleries whose livelihood seemed to revolve around trading in interesting old things. Seiji felt that some of the shops were a little like his grandpa's shop except that here the prices appeared to be from another planet. Presumably there were a lot of rich art lovers in the area, or perhaps these dealers did as grandpa did and traded at shows, possibly in Milan, Venice or Rome. As they threaded their way up one of these interesting, sloping streets they found themselves, at the top, in an open space, a square, not very large, with three or four cafés around the perimeter. Awnings were extended and customers sat in the shade out of the fierce afternoon sun. In the centre was a fountain. Three fat stone cherubs cavorted around a unicorn. Water jets squirted up from the edge of the stone basin. The water splashed and gurgled down over the stone figures and the sound filled the square, cooling it and refreshing the senses. They stopped on the threshold of the piazza.

"Hey, this is nice," observed Seiji,  
"Mmm."  
"Let's have a drink."  
"Sure."

Pure chance led them to the nearest café; how different things may have been if they'd gone to another, or turned round and gone somewhere else. It's these possible alternatives that, if you think about them too much, will hurt your head. The café they chose had a red and white striped awning and a sign proclaimed it to be the _Café Volpi_. A boy named Adamo worked here in the summer as a waiter although today they wouldn't learn his name. But later, in the coming days, the long dog-days of her stay, Shizuku would spend a lot of time here at one of these tables and she and Adamo would get to know each other. Adamo, of course, being a hot blooded typical Italian youth would try his luck with her; he had never dated a Japanese girl and he later told her that he found her flat face, her small dark eyes and her whole quiet demeanour captivating. She of course, although she found his interest flattering, declined gently.

In time, she, Seiji and he would become good friends, a friendship that would last years. I'm reminded that they are still friends today, and Adamo, in the traditions of the best fairy tales, did eventually find his true love but that's a story I'll tell you another time. For today that was all a foreign country, an unknown land and this day Adamo was quite busy so he merely served them and smiled, particularly at the cute Japanese girl.

The Volpi became in time Shizuku's base of operations for exploring the city and, on those hot afternoons around five or six, if he didn't meet her outside the school or in the Hotel Alfonso, Seiji would meet her here. The _Piazza San Giorgio_ was a strange place. There was a small church which never seemed to be open, those three or four cafes and above the cafés, the townhouses. And little else. Few tourists found it and it was like a small world of its own, known only to locals and the students of the nearby _Academia Grafica_. Oh, and of course, there was the fountain. The fountain that on the last day the boy and the girl each dropped a coin in, making a wish, and wondering if they would one day return, although on that last morning things were very different and neither of them for their different reasons, could really believe they would.

They found a table under the shade of the awning. They sat and sipped milkshakes. After a while a cat came near and sat close by watching them. It was another small scrawny one, ginger this time. Shizuku noticed it first,

"Here, kitty, kitty."

She called the cat with a kissing noise. It came a little closer and stopped again. Despite her best efforts and the enticement of a dollop of strawberry milkshake foam on the end of her finger, the scruffy ginger cat refused to come closer.

"Lots of cats round here, but they all look really wild."  
"Maybe they are."  
"Why don't people look after them, like your grandpa does with Moon?"  
"Maybe they keep the mice and rats down. If people fed them too much they'd all get fat. I can't ever remember seeing Moon catch a mouse, he's useless."  
"Mmm," she looked around, "I love it here. Thanks for inviting me Seiji."  
"Well, we'll see if you still like it in a weeks' time after you've hardly seen anything of me."  
"Don't worry about it. I'm going to explore, walk everywhere. The buildings are great aren't they, they look centuries old!"  
"I think lots of the city is sixteenth and seventeenth century."  
"Wow. I feel like I can walk up to them and touch them and feel the stories they have to tell: wars and princes, weddings and plagues. Ideas for books are all around here. I just have to pick them like fruit off trees."  
"You're doing it again."  
"What?"  
Seiji spoke in a comical robotic voice, "Warning! Warning! Shizuku weirdness alert!"  
She did her booming all powerful evil witch voice, "You can mock me, O small insignificant violin apprentice! But be prepared to bow down to the Great Storyteller of the East!" She stood, pointing a rolled up napkin at him like a wizard about to smite him with a spell from her wand.  
"Yeah, right."


	14. Chapter 13 The Doll

**Chapter Thirteen – The Doll  
**

Another day. The earth had spun around one more time. Seiji sat on the horse trough. Shizuku ran up to him, he spoke in a hurry,

"Sorry, I gotta go, were starting!"  
"Learn hard – see you at five. At the café!" this last was called out as his hand dropped from hers and he turned to run inside. His acknowledgement was a raised arm as he disappeared.

I'm not going to describe the days that followed in any detail for they were, from our point of view, much the same. Seiji would study at his classes and end each day with a head that ached and hands that blistered or smelled of sawdust and wood oil. Shizuku would go into the old city. She would do some of her school studying or practice her Italian, or she might sit at the café with a milkshake and write.

Years later she would look through her filing and realise that those hot days sat outside the Volpi were among the most productive of her early time. She could certainly count four books that definitely were born there and elements of three others that owed an influence to her time in Cremona or that strange afternoon in Venice (about which I'll tell you everything at the proper time). Her favourite was _Days of Orange _a love story set in nineteenth century Italy against a background of the wars of the _Risorgimento _when powerful political forces of the establishment and the republicans clashed. It was only much later that her womanizing hero, she realised, was none other than Adamo. She never told him and she had no idea if he ever read _Days of Orange _since he never mentioned it but she thought it strange how such small influences, such brief moments could make such big ripples later.

The days passed like a montage of scenes from a movie. You know, that technique directors use to tell us that a lot of time is passing but they don't have the time or the budget to give us the details. A bit like this really, except I don't have a budget at all, and you don't have lots of time, or rather, I'm assuming you don't. The days faded in and out, layering one over another, images, memories fluttered by like photographs in an album: Seiji and Shizuku ate spaghetti - he got it down his shirt and she giggled; they walked hand in hand down an evening path at the riverside; She stood inside a church, looking up at the ceiling with eyes full of wonder; Seiji in school working away at some detail carving on a violin; She walked to and fro in a park, a book in her hand, practicing her Italian aloud to herself; the couple lay on some grass in a field laughing; Shizuku bent down to talk to a thin dirty cat; a panicking confused Seiji read a textbook at his desk; She studied in a library. I think here that three or four days went by. It might have been more but that's hardly important. But the day that followed these, not quite a week into their stay, now _that_ was an important day. It was the fifth of August 1995, a Friday. It was a day Shizuku would never forget because something happened that day that changed her life. The ripples made by this particular pebble in this particular pond went far and wide and passed through time many years into the future. These ripples affected many people. So I'll tell you about them.

She was sat at their table at the Volpi, her usual milkshake and pastry beside her. She was reading, her right elbow on the table, her chin resting in the palm of her right hand. With her left hand she turned the pages of a book. It wasn't a particularly interesting book and you will know that when I tell you that its title was "Advanced Chemistry – Stage II" but she committed this time to it, like it or not she would be honest to herself and to her father and study. From time to time Shizuku uncoiled her right hand and made notes. She stopped occasionally to sip her drink.

The cat came and sat beside a building at the top of the sloping street and watched the girl at the café. The cat had been here other days and seen this person, but on those days it hadn't been the right moment to go up to her. Now, thought the cat, was the right moment. So this time, it stood up and walked towards her. Closer to where she was sitting the cat stopped and sat again. It suddenly knew it needed to wash so it did, its paw, its face, that difficult spot just _there_, behind the ear. _That was it, oh yes, that was better_. It was the washing movement that caught Shizuku's eye. She laid down "Advanced Chemistry – Stage II" and looked at the cat. She rubbed her aching wrist. This wasn't one of the usual thin ferals that populated the city but seemed well fed with a healthy coat. It had a red collar with a silver owner's disk. It was a pale grey tabby, almost white, a female. It meowed. Shizuku looked down and studied its pretty face. There was a faint sparkle in its eye just like the flawed eyes of the Baron.

"Hello, cat, what's your name? You don't know Baron Humbert von Jikkingen do you? You've got eyes just like him."

The cat didn't say anything. Or do anything. It didn't jump up and bow or anything like that. Those things only happen in fantasy stories don't they? But the cat did blink. A single slow inscrutable blink. Then it meowed again, turned and walked off.

"Hey, now why should I follow you? The last time I followed a cat all kinds of weird things happened."

Shizuku finished her drink and snack and gathered up her books and notes. From her purse she retrieved money and left it on her plate. She stood and looked around for Adamo. He was lounging in the café doorway, his silver tray on his hip, watching three girls walk across the piazza. Shizuku raised an arm to him.

"Grazie, Adamo. Ciao!"  
"Ciao babe!" He winked.

The cat reached the edge of the piazza. It rubbed against the brickwork of the corner of a building. It turned to look at the person who had stood up, then it trotted lightly down the sloping street of art shops. Shizuku shouldered her bag and walked after the cat. She made her way down past the antique shops, the cat trotting a few yards ahead of her.

"It's no good leading me into one of these shops, cat, I can't afford anything in this street."

The cat decided to go home. Perhaps the girl following her would come too. Then she might talk to Anna and Anna would be in a better mood. A mood to feed her maybe. The pale grey cat stopped at a doorway and turned to look back towards the girl. Once it saw her following, it jumped nimbly up a step and went in the open door. Shizuku's face was disbelieving,

"No, not again. This does _not_ happen twice."

She walked down to the shop in which the cat had gone. She placed a hand to her forehead and shaded the glass, peering into the dark interior. It was obviously a very expensive art shop. Shizuku shrugged and followed the cat in. It was dark inside in comparison to the sunlit street. In a few moments her eyes had adjusted to the lighting. The shop was full of paintings, statuary, furniture and especially violins. _This is nothing like Mr. Nishi's Earth Shop_, she thought, _it reeks of money_. A well dressed lady in her mid-thirties with a large nose and black hair pulled back into a tight bun was behind a counter.

"Buongiorno signorina," she greeted her visitor.  
"Buongiorno signora."

Shizuku bowed, Japanese customs had come with her. The lady nodded her head in response. She was immaculately dressed – clothes, hair, make up, straight out of a fashion house. She had a kindly smile but seemed careworn and tired for her age. The pale grey cat now sat on her desk, curled up washing its tail.

"Do you speak English? My Italian is not good."  
"Of course. Please look around, you are most welcome."  
"Is the cat yours?"  
"My mothers. But she lives here with me. Lots of customers like to talk to Tikka, she's good for business."  
"Tikka? That's a pretty name," Shizuku half expected the lady to add _"Yes, Baroness Tikka von Jikkingen, great name don't you think?"_ and had she done so she would have run screaming out of the shop calling for the déja vu police to save her.

But the lady said nothing, she merely smiled.

Shizuku politely walked around the shop, pretending to study paintings on the wall to her left, and to the right on a display board in the centre of the room. Feeling a bit stupid and out of place she intended to do a circuit of the displays for the sake of politeness and then leave. It must have been obvious to the owner that she wasn't a serious customer. At the back of the shop she turned right behind the display board. Back there, behind the board was a glass fronted cabinet, a cabinet invisible from the front of the shop. As she walked past the cabinet she glanced at it. And stopped. She gasped. Inside there seemed to be pieces of low value not worth displaying in a more prominent location. An old bible, a walking stick, a stone jar, a few tiny paintings, a battered tinplate toy train. And a doll.

It was the doll that Shizuku had seen.

It was a cat, it stood upright and was about twenty inches or half a metre tall. It was in very poor condition: no ears, no whiskers, the fur was grubby and worn, the glass eyes dull. It was naked apart from a voluminous skirt that was once red. One paw held the remains of a parasol. What was left of its fur was pale grey. In the glass of the case Shizuku saw her own face reflected, for a moment her reflected eyes laid exactly over the dolls eyes. For that short ghostly moment it was as though she were the doll and could feel its loneliness, its pain. She came closer still and her eyes widened in surprise.

"Oh…. Oh my… oh look at _you_. What a mess! What happened to you?"

The lady owner was looking with one eye at a magazine and with the other just carefully checking her customer. You could never be sure with young people these days, the thieves and fraudsters were getting more and more clever, using children in their gangs to steal from shop owners when their guard was down. It was a sad reflection on society that you couldn't completely trust anyone these days. Although this Japanese girl did seem alright, the lady had felt no bad feeling about her. Her desk had a small closed circuit security television screen on it. Its black and white image showed the area at the back of the shop where the view from the desk was obstructed by the display board. On the screen now she could see a fuzzy black and white view of the young Japanese lady's back. She was peering into the cabinet. The cabinet that she herself hardly ever looked in, and on the rare occasions she did, its contents made her heart ache. Suddenly the girl on the TV screen leaned left. Simultaneously the girl at the back of the shop put her head to the right around the side of the cabinet.

"Excuse me, can you tell me anything about this cat doll?"

Behind her desk the lady owner looked blank. Tikka the cat however sat up and looked towards Shizuku with interest. Shizuku suddenly realised that in her excitement she had spoken Japanese. She tried English,

"Please. This doll…?"  
"Yes, something you like?" the lady came from behind the desk and walked over. She reached the display cabinet and Shizuku asked,  
"The cat doll. Um…", she suddenly felt stupid, the only thing she could think of to ask that wouldn't sound rude was, "…is its name Luisa?"  
"Good heavens, why do you ask that? That's my mother's name!"  
"Your mother's name is Luisa?" Shizuku's eyes widened,  
The lady was a little suspicious, "Yes, why do you say that name?"  
Shizuku became flustered and embarrassed, she turned pink, "Um… I know this doll... I mean…"  
"Young lady you are not making sense. This doll has belonged to my mother for years, it has never left this shop since – hmm, probably before you were born."  
"I'm sorry. This is going to sound rude. But your mother, did she live in Germany before the war?"

The lady was startled and put a hand to her throat in a protective gesture, she almost recoiled. The surprise on her face was so obvious she didn't need to answer.

"Oh Santa Maria, Si!" and then in English, "How did you know that?"

Shizuku began to stumble over the words, her English wasn't good enough,

"And your mother, when she was young, did she know a Japanese man? Before the war?"

The lady took a step back and nodded, her eyes wide with surprise. And then Shizuku took the final step,

"Mr. Nishi, his name is Mr. Nishi."  
"Ahhh…"

The lady crumpled at the knees and began to slide down. Shizuku reached forward and caught her under the arms. Her pink shoulder bag slipped off her arm and hung down too, getting in the way. Worried, she reverted in her concern to Japanese,

"Oh. Oh, no. Oh, somebody? Help!"

Struggling with the fainted lady's weight, Shizuku half dragged, half carried her to the shop desk. She managed to steer her to a chair behind the desk and the lady collapsed into it. The cat jumped down and ran out into the street. Shizuku looked around the back of the desk area, hoping to find an office perhaps.

"Hello? Hello? Er… help? Anyone here?"

Only silence replied. She went to the shop doorway and looked quickly to left and right along the street. She was close to panic.

"Hello? Anyone?"

The cat sat outside looking up at her. But no-one was in the street, no-one answered. She went back inside. She was panicking now. Arms flapping, she walked a few steps one way quickly, then the other. She opened her bag and took out a bottle of mineral water. Unscrewing the cap she tilted the bottle against the lady's mouth, wetting her lips.

"Oh, please, wake up!"

She looked around, put the bottle on the desk and clasped her hands to her chest. She raised her voice,

"Hello! Anyone?"

She looked at the fainted lady, then looked around one more time, guiltily.

"I'm sorry… I'm ever so sorry about this."

Then she slapped the lady's face. She quickly drew her hand back up to her throat in a guilty gesture. The woman coughed and groaned and came out of her faint. Shizuku bent down, reached out to put her hands on the woman's shoulders but thought better of it and drew back again. Her Japanese reserve was still stronger than her desire to touch, to make contact, to help.

"Hello? Are you alright? Here, try some water."

She picked up the bottle again and offered it to the lady. Groggily the lady held the bottle and took a sip. She looked at it a bit stupidly, I think she was the kind of lady who had probably never drunk from a bottle in her life. She found her voice,

"Oh… I'm sorry. What? What was that? Did I faint? I'm sorry."  
"It's OK. I'm sorry I think it was the shock."  
"Nishi… you said Nishi…?"  
"Yes," Shizuku was still embarrassed.  
"You _know_ Mr Nishi?"  
"Yes!"  
"My… my… is… is he alive?" she seemed overcome.  
"Yes! Oh, yes, he's my boyfriend's grandfather!"  
"Grandfather?"  
"Uh huh."  
"Boyfriend?"  
"Yes," Shizuku became puzzled, _was the lady alright?  
_"Oh, goodness. What will Luisa think when she hears this?"  
"Luisa?"  
"Not the doll!"  
"Pardon?"  
"Not the doll I said!" It seemed that the effects of the faint lingered.  
"No, not the doll…?"  
"My mother, Luisa. She's very old and quite ill. What will she think when she hears that her friend is alive?"  
"Is your mother in Germany still?"  
"Oh, no, no. She lives _here_, in Cremona. With my uncle."

Shizuku had conducted this conversation bent down, her face close to the lady's. Now she stood up and a great light seemed to shine on her. A wide smile spread across her face,

"Mr. Nishi's childhood friend is alive and in Cremona? I can't believe it! I must tell Seiji!"  
"Who?"  
"Seiji. My boyfriend. Mr. Nishi's grandson. He's here in Cremona too, I'm staying with him. He makes violins."

This was all too much for the lady. She put a hand to her heart and moaned, then took a deep drink from the water bottle.

"Oh my goodness. My dear, what is your name?"  
"Tsukishima. Shizuku Tsukishima. I live in Tokyo, I'm fifteen, nearly sixteen."  
"Oh, young lady. What news you bring! I'm sorry, oh, I'm so rude. My name is Anna-Marie, Anna-Marie Baroni, my mother is 78 now and she is confined to a wheelchair."  
"Oh. Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that. But Baroni, did you say?"  
"Yes. It comes from the German, it means a freeman, someone who isn't a serf, medieval I suppose."  
"Oh, not to do with Barons then?"  
"I have no idea. It might be though."  
Shizuku thought hard, "So your mother was born… mmm… in 1917?"  
"Correct."  
"And when the war started she would be twenty-two, yes?"  
"That's right my dear. And she was so beautiful when she was young, so beautiful. Up there, that picture."

Anna-Marie pointed to an old photograph in a frame on the wall behind her. Shizuku walked to it and peered closely. It showed a young lady sitting in a very old fashioned open motor car, she wore an unusual hat, rounded and with a small brim. It was secured under her chin with a headscarf as though to prevent it blowing off her head. The girl wore a fussy blouse and a long skirt and had dark hair and an oval face. She looked quite serious. She seemed not much older than Shizuku was now. Shizuku could see that she was indeed an angel.

"Oh, she's lovely."  
"Yes, she was."

Shizuku came back and squatted down before the lady so that her face was on the same level.

"Can I ask… if it's not too rude… About the doll?"

"Oh, my dear, what a sad story that is, the story of a family tragedy. It's amazing that we even have the doll. It's not for sale, none of the things in that cabinet are. They are kept there for safe keeping, and because my mother cannot bear to have them in the house, they hold such sad memories for her."


	15. Chapter 14 Luisa's Story

**Chapter Fourteen – Luisa's Story  
**

Anna-Marie told this polite Japanese girl most of her mothers life story that afternoon. She felt she had to. It was as though her mother had held this all in over the years and her daughter was trapped in with her. For Anna it was awkward at first since what she told this complete stranger was very personal but as she spoke she felt a great weight lifting from her heart. It was, for her, a therapy she'd craved but hadn't realised.

"After Mr. Nishi had to leave Bavaria my mother bought the doll from the café owner but very soon after that things became very difficult for her parents in Germany. You've noticed of course that I am a Jew. And you know all about what that meant for Jews living in Germany in the 1930s. One night a friend knocked on my grandfathers door. There were soldiers in the town, pulling people out of their beds in the middle of the night and putting them on lorries, taking them away. My mother and her family took what they could in a few bags and left at once. They travelled by night and in the day slept in woodland or under hedges. They went south and eventually reached Switzerland. They were lucky. For years afterwards my mother would tell me again and again how lucky they were. The war started, the town was burned, nothing remained. The German army was defeated, the American army came."

"In 1945 my grandfather went back to southern Bavaria, the Arlberg region. There was nothing left. Nothing at all. The town was a ruin. He found a few things in the rubble of their lovely house. And he never went back. The cat doll was one of the few things that survived; along with what you have seen in that cabinet. My grandfather learned that there was a Jewish community in Torino. Germany was full of hatred and bitterness, the north of Italy had not been affected so much by the war and there were British troops there. So they went to Torino. Mother married the son of the owner of a car factory. After the war my father's workshop couldn't build lorries fast enough, the whole country needed them. He made lots of money. He sold the car factory to a big company just after I was born. FIAT I think it was. My grandparents died in the 1960s. My mother then fell ill and they retired and moved to Cremona. The air in Torino in those days was very dirty from the factories. Father said Cremona was cleaner. My mother bought this shop and it was something to keep her mind working as she grew older. But her illness got worse and I looked after the shop and have been here since – oh, the late 1980s. After father died mother went to live with her younger brother. That would be my uncle Anton. She would sit in the garden on summer evenings and tell me all about the war and her school days before the war, and the handsome Japanese student she met. How they fell in love but he had to leave. She would often hold the doll and cry. She believed Mr. Nishi had died in the war, Japan suffered as badly as Germany you know."


	16. Chapter 15 AnnaMarie's Garden

**Chapter Fifteen – Anna-Marie's Garden  
**  
That evening Seiji and Shizuku ate at her hotel and afterwards she invited him to her room. The view here in the evening was beautiful, the westering sun would light up the farmland on the far bank of the river and from here you could hear the city making its mellow evening noises; cafés, restaurants, church bells. She and Seiji leaned on the balcony railing. It was growing dark and the sky was a dome of gold and pink. She told him about her encounter that day,

"And then I told Anna-Marie that your grandpa still had the Baron doll. That it was very precious to him and he still thought about Luisa, and dreamed of the two dolls being together again. She said we must come and visit her mother, she knew Luisa would love to meet Mr. Nishi's grandson."  
"I can hardly believe this. It's amazing."

Later, after they had said goodnight, she sat up in bed and wrote a letter to Mr. Nishi telling him she had found Luisa, and the lady cat doll. She hardly knew how to write or what to write, she knew this news would be such a surprise for him. She even wondered if maybe the news would be unwelcome coming after so many years. Shizuku had thought that perhaps Seiji's grandpa had now thought the past forever lost and that he had put this episode behind him long ago, it was a foreign country now, somewhere he perhaps no longer wished to visit. It might disturb the comfortable world he had resigned himself to. Although he had spoken to her fondly of his memories she wondered how he might react if the chance of communicating with Luisa or even meeting her again would arise.

She sat for long minutes, her pen poised over blank paper, her gaze fixed on a distant invisible place. Then she considered the days events and how strange they had seemed. Shizuku had spent some time thinking about chance, fate and co-incidence; a story writer often considers these things when struggling with plots. She had a slight belief in the spirits of things, particularly places – she had felt a strong connection to this city the moment she'd arrived. She could feel it talking to her, and like a person she could talk to it. And she also felt her own spirit sometimes connect with other people and how sometimes things would happen that she could not explain. The day she had seen Moon and followed him to the Earth Shop had also been a strange and magical day, from that day had grown her friendship with Seiji and with his grandpa; she recalled how odd it was that when Mr. Nishi had invited her to look closely at the workings of that wonderful clock, she had put down her fathers lunch bag in order to climb the stepladder. She had then forgotten it and her second meeting with Seiji had been when he had returned the lunch. And that cat! The way it had sat on his bike and given her that odd look – just _so_, as though it knew something.

Surely with consequences such as these the seemingly trivial events that led up to them had significance. Purpose. A plan. Whose purpose and whose plan it was she could not say, she had no belief in a Higher Being. Despite having a strong imagination and intuition and despite being able to transport herself into a world of make believe any time she wished, Shizuku was still a practical and clear-thinking girl. No, it was plain to her that today's events were _meant to be_, in the same way her comical pursuit of Moon from the train and up the hills had _meant to be_. She made up her mind, and knowing it was the right thing to do, with confidence she began to write.

And that is how it started, once the pebble had hit the surface of the water no-one could know to where the ripples would expand.

The next day Shizuku returned to Anna-Marie's shop. However when she got there it was closed, and dark. A note was stuck to the inside of the glass pane of the door.

_"To the young Japanese lady, sorry I have to go out – please wait around the back. I will be back as soon as I can. The red door"._

Shizuku looked to the right of the property and there, on the downhill side of the shop was a red wooden door. She reached for the handle and turned it. A narrow passage was revealed beyond. It was open to the sky and the wall of the adjacent shop was to the right. Shizuku walked down. The passage ended at a brick wall and there were a couple of rubbish bins there. Part way down on the left was another door. Shizuku tried the handle. It opened and she peered cautiously round. Beyond this second door was a small garden. On a stone flagged patio stood a white painted metal table and chairs under a large sun shade. A jug of lemonade and some upturned glasses were on a tray. The pretty garden had flower beds and a couple of small fruit trees, a tiny circle of lawn. Beyond a high old brick wall was a view towards the river Po. Shizuku entered. The garden was a blaze of colour, filled with pretty flowers. She sat at the table and looked around. Moments later the grey-white tabby cat walked out from behind some flowers, sat in the sun on the patio and washed a paw.

"Hello Tikka. Where's your mummy gone then?"

She sat for some time in the shade of the umbrella drinking lemonade. By the time the side gateway opened again the shadows had swung around the garden. Shizuku looked up at the sound of the clicking gate latch. Anna-Marie entered and the girl stood up. Anna-Marie beamed a wide smile at her and spoke in English,

"Oh, you are here. That's good. I am very sorry, my mother was unwell earlier and I took her to the doctor. I left her back at uncle's house, she wasn't well enough to come to the shop to see you. I'm sorry. If you can come again tomorrow afternoon I can take you to visit her at my uncles."  
"Seiji has no school classes tomorrow so I would like to invite him if I may? I know he would like to meet Luisa as well."  
"Of course, as we said, if mother meets her old friend's grandson that would be so nice, don't you think? At two o'clock?"  
"Yes then. Goodbye, I'll be here again tomorrow at two."  
"Goodbye."


	17. Chapter 16 Seiji Speaks Without Words

**Chapter Sixteen – Meeting Luisa/Seiji Speaks Without Words  
**  
Sunday the seventh of August was dreamlike. As the day went on Shizuku more than once had to stop and tell herself that she really wasn't asleep, that this was indeed happening. She and Seiji spent the morning at the _Duomo_, they climbed its tall red _torrazzo. _At the top the observation walkway was covered in by wire mesh to stop people throwing things, or themselves, off. They stood and looked at the view. The dusty brown, pink and red tiled roofs of Cremona lay below all around them like the patchwork of a quilt. They pointed out the river, the railway and tried for ages to see the school and the hotel but these were just two distant roofs among hundreds, it was like trying to see two specific waves on the sea, so they gave up.

Seiji brought his camera and he took some photos of the view, and of her. A few tourists came up, stood for a while, polluted the place with their chatter and cigarette smoke and then departed. But the boy and the girl stayed there over an hour and at midday the church bells all over the city chimed. A concerto for city bells in one movement. _Just for us, _Seiji had said. Shizuku for some reason remembered another clock striking twelve and a lovesick prince looking at a fairy. Yes, she thought to herself, she'd been right to send that letter.

They made their way at two o'clock to the art shop. A car was outside. Anna-Marie greeted them, Shizuku introduced Seiji and Anna then locked up the shop and they drove off. She took them south and east over the river along flat dusty roads. Fields extended for miles on each side. The wide level flood plain of the Po was so alien to them, there were no wide flat spaces like this in Japan. The countryside seemed to go on for ever. They came to a town called Busseto and turned into a small development of modern houses. Anna stopped the car outside a neat bungalow. It could almost be anywhere. Here with modern housing developments the Italian style was being slowly eroded and corrupted by the influence of a more general 'Euro' style of architecture. They walked to the front door and Anna-Marie rang the bell.

This seemed so ordinary, so disarmingly prosaic. Shizuku knew she was about to see a person she'd seen before in her imagination standing beside a steam train nearly sixty years ago, yet she was now about to see her again – or rather for the first time. Déjà vu in reverse. She'd expected the old lady to live in a pretty little cottage deep in the woods, slightly mad perhaps and surrounded by cats. She had to remind herself again that this wasn't a fairy tale. A grey haired man opened the door and welcomed them in. Seiji and Shizuku bowed. The man smiled, he was about sixty-five and his once good looks had faded under wrinkles and excess weight.

He led them through the home; a cool corridor of whitewashed walls and fired earth tiles out to a patio behind the house. The heat here was held off by a roof of wooden beams over which a vine grew luxuriously casting a pleasant shade. The sunlight came through in small pools and narrow inquisitive lines giving the scene a magical light even in the heat of the early afternoon. There was a wooden table and chairs. An ancient lady sat to one side in a wheelchair. She faced an archway and was looking out at the garden. She had snow white hair drawn back from her face and a blanket over her knees. Her skin was brown and wrinkled like leather, her eyes small and watery. At first Shizuku could make no connection to the image of the tomboy teenager she had seen in the old photograph. She and Seiji stood a moment on the doorstep looking. It seemed so rude to intrude on this person, this life. Shizuku had a sudden fearful urge to turn and leave, to let this lady alone in peace. And an old man thousands of miles away who as yet didn't know she was alive, also in peace. Anna-Marie put a hand on her shoulder.

"Come, let me introduce you, mother so much wants to meet you."

They walked forward. The old lady lifted her head and turned to look at them. Shizuku's eyes connected with hers and the girl knew at once that this was right.

I am not going to tell you about the first moments of that meeting. They are private and very personal to those involved. Shizuku has asked me to let her and Seiji keep this memory to themselves and to Luisa whose moment it really was. I'll just mention that it was both a happy and a sad moment for them all. Anna-Marie after making the first introductions withdrew tactfully to the house to help her uncle prepare drinks and snacks and I think we too should leave the three of them alone together.

They stayed some hours and talked long and earnestly about many things. Luisa wanted to know all about Japan. Shizuku wanted to know all about before the war but held her questions back, it was too soon to dig up such personal ground. _Another day,_ she thought, _there will be other days_. Later, Anna-Marie's uncle served coffee, lemonade and pastries. He and Anna joined the group and they all sat around the wooden table in the shade talking animatedly. There was laughter, and at one point, to illustrate a comment he'd made, Seiji stood and did an impression of playing a violin. Anna's uncle jumped up and rushed inside. He came back moments later carrying an instrument in a battered case. Seiji was deeply embarrassed and at first shyly declined to play. However both Luisa and Anna encouraged him. Shizuku sat silently, her hands in her lap, looking at her knees. She feared what he might play. He'd played for her a few nights before they'd left Tokyo.

One evening in the last week in July at the Earth Shop she had arranged to visit for a musical evening. Kita and Minami had been there and another man she'd not met before, Seiji's grandpa introduced him as Higashi. They had played a few lively cheerful tunes, western folk and pop songs, and some harmless J-Pop. She sang her small wavering accompaniment to several of them and had enjoyed the buzz of mutual sharing with the others but had found that she more and more wanted to sit and listen.

At one point Minami had begun a melody on his recorder and as the mood took them the others joined in, each matching the melody or picking up and developing the theme in a different direction. After a while she found that Seiji's violin, up until then moving peacefully in the background, began to assert itself more, Minami and Kita let their playing match his, then moved behind it so that Seiji led. Gradually people stopped playing. Higashi lay aside his trumpet and listened. The recorder stopped until it was just the cello, guitar and violin. At some point that Shizuku didn't even notice the guitar ceased and Kita sat and watched Seiji. Mr. Nishi continued a gentle background theme repeating but Seiji suddenly seemed to move on to something new and Shizuku identified some Beethoven in there, possibly the ninth.

For a time grandfather and grandson played as one, the others sat silent and were held into this moment, folded in and held down by the boy and the man playing. Shizuku looked from the young face to the old face. From time to time the two musicians would glance at each other and some simple but sufficient message would pass silently between them. Shizuku found she was clasping her hands tightly together in a hard knot as though trying to hold on to this, the experience of witnessing two people connected this way dug into her soul and laid it bare. _This is love_, she thought, _this is what two people in love can be like when words are no longer needed_. She looked back at Seiji. It was certainly the ninth now and Shizuku suddenly found she wasn't in the Earth Shop anymore. She found she wasn't anywhere but with him and with that sound. It filled her and when she couldn't contain any more of it, it overflowed, tore her open, gushed out of her and she wept. She had no idea why. She watched the face of the boy. Usually when he played he closed his eyes, set his jaw and struggled to find the notes, but this evening he didn't look carefully at his fingerwork, nor did he close his eyes. Instead he looked at her. The two of them were alone now. The cello had stopped playing. The violin was everything, the only thing. And his eyes. His eyes held her in place and pierced her heart. She had never experienced anything like this before. Her face beamed with joy and the tears flowed silently down, she hardly knew she was crying. A feeling was in her and going through her and over her that she didn't recognise and didn't understand.

She had no idea how long he played but when he finished she stood up and ran outside to the balcony, ran up the side staircase and through the door to the roadway and across the street. She reached a railing a little way down the road and although there was a view there, she didn't see it. Her sobs tore through her over and over. She couldn't stop and her body heaved with an emotion she didn't understand. She cried and cried. The violin had been the most beautiful thing she'd ever heard but it had also been his eyes and the way he had spoken to her with so much truth and with longing and yet without words. A few minutes passed and he was beside her. He'd silently approached and stood near her, not speaking, not touching. She gradually stopped and sniffled like a child. He held out a tissue for her and she wiped her eyes, her runny nose. She sniffed again. She was embarrassed.

"What was that?" she asked  
"The music?"  
"No. Not that. Me running out. What caused that?"  
"Only you know that."  
"No. No, I don't understand. Oh, Seiji, that was beautiful, but it hurt so much. Why do you always say your playing is nothing special? That was the most special thing I've ever heard." Seiji didn't answer. He merely looked at his feet. Then he spoke the words she craved to hear,  
"That was Beethovens Ninth Symphony, well, a bit of it, with my own variations. Anyway, the bad notes were mine," he smiled, "That was 'Ode to Joy'. I was playing it to you. For you."  
She stared into his eyes, "You must love me very much."  
"Yes."  
"Thank you. And your grandpa too. You love him don't you?"  
"Yes, of course."  
"I could tell. You and he were speaking without words, I could see it on your faces, feel it in the music."  
"Oh, yeah," he was embarrassed now, he looked away, at the view, "its what musicians sometimes do, when they know each other really well."  
"Are we going to know each other well, some day?"  
"I hope so. Did you feel me speaking?"  
"In the music? Yes."  
"Then we are almost there. One day I want us to be together and to speak without words."

She put her arms round him and held on tight. He hugged her.

"I hope soon we can be all the way there," she wasn't sure he'd know what she meant and she wasn't _completely_ sure what she meant herself exactly, but she hoped she could convey her feelings to him somehow.  
"Soon, yes, I hope."

And now here he was again with a violin in his hands, the first time she'd seen him hold one since that evening. The others were eager and encouraging him on in a light hearted way. She hoped he wouldn't play the ninth. She couldn't bear to look at him. A first note came out, a mangled group of others followed and he stopped to tune the instrument. Anton made some excuse about it being old and hardly used. He began again, and Shizuku breathed a sigh of relief. This was a very jolly tune, a quick happy tune, she knew it at once, the Hornpipe movement of Handel's Water Music. She looked up at his face and he caught her eye and gave her a wink. But she was amazed, this was complicated music and he was playing it from memory on an old instrument. Yes there were wrong notes and she could hear the faults but she thought it a wonderful impromptu piece. When he finished he held the bow and lowered the violin. Instead of happy but none-too-impressed polite claps there was silence, a stunned weight lay over the four listeners. Then Luisa spoke,

"Did you say you wanted to be a violin maker, Seiji?"  
"Yes, one day I hope to be."  
"You should play, young man. You should play. You're wasted making them. You know that do you?"  
"I want to make them. I'm too shy to play in front of crowds, I don't like the attention. I'm a person who would rather get on in the background and do something that lasts, something worthwhile."  
"Like your grandfather?"  
"Yes, like him."  
"Yes, Shirou was like that. Well, my child, you have a wonderful talent, a beautiful gift. You take care of it now," and with that Luisa looked not at him but at Shizuku.

The mood was broken and the moment passed, the group talked of incidental things for a while and soon it was time to leave. Shizuku knew that the time to ask had to be now or it would be gone, as she rose to go she turned to Luisa,

"Madam Baroni, there is something I want to ask you."  
"Certainly my dear."  
"The doll in the shop… well, grandpa… that is, I mean, Mr. Nishi has talked to me about it in the past. It's something he has mentioned more than once… Umm… He has a fond dream of having the two dolls together again. I mean, would it be possible for me to buy the doll from you?"  
"Buy the doll?"  
"Yes, but I'm sorry I don't have much money."  
"My dear child, the doll is not for sale."  
"I see. I'm sorry."  
"But she is yours."  
"I'm sorry?"  
"The doll is yours. I'm giving her to you."  
"Mother!" Anna-Marie interjected loudly,  
"Don't you 'mother' me with that tone Anna, the doll only hurts me now, it holds nothing but bad memories. I am going to let Shizuku send it to Shirou. He will get much more from it than I ever will now."  
"But..."  
"Don't you 'but' me, either, you've been 'butting' me for far too long now. This is my decision. I'm old but I'm not senile yet."  
"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Nishi will be overjoyed," Shizuku smiled  
"There's one condition, child."  
"Yes?"  
"Shirou is a craftsman you say? A restorer of antiques?"  
"Yes, he is very skilled. I saw an old clock once that he had repaired. It was like new," _the dwarf prince and the fairy, _she thought.  
"Then you can have the doll and send it to Shirou on the condition he repairs it and makes it like new, so it and the Baron doll can be together properly."  
"Of course! Of course! I'm sure that's what he would want too."  
"Good, that's settled then. Anna, when you go back to the shop, please give Shizuku the doll."


	18. Chapter 17 The Cat Returns

**Chapter Seventeen – The Cat Returns  
**  
In her hotel room that evening she packed the doll in a box and some paper Tony had given her. Seiji sat on her bed watching, he seemed troubled by something, and more than once made as though to speak, then changed his mind. Shizuku pretended not to notice but she felt him, felt his worry. She decided to say nothing, whatever it was, he would tell her in his own time if he wished to.

It was night time. Mr. Nishi had gone late to collect the parcel from the courier depot. It had been delivered earlier but he had been out and the delivery driver had left a card. By the time Mr. Nishi got home the depot was close to shutting. But he had got there in time and now came back to the dark closed Earth Shop. As he let himself in he glanced at his table. He was there, watching him silently, his cane and hat held behind him this time. Mr. Nishi smiled and said a silent hello, then shut the door behind him and locked up. He switched on the light, took the box to the table and began to open it. He carefully turned aside layers of tissue paper. He paused, then with great care reached in and lifted out the battered cat doll. His old eyes widened in shock and wetness appeared in them. He walked over to the round table where the Baron was standing.

"Well, here is quite a surprise for us both Baron, look who has come home to see you."

Suddenly he put his hand to his chest, stepped backward and sat heavily in a chair.


	19. Chapter 18 Seiji's Strength

**Chapter Eighteen – Seiji's Strength  
**  
Nearly two weeks went by. Nothing much that concerns us happened in those two weeks. But something very important and special happened for Seiji and Shizuku. However I will leave it to another time to tell you about that. It involved speaking without words and this isn't the place to mention such things.

It was late afternoon. Shizuku sat on the hotel steps. Seiji came out of the school, some other students also, he raised a hand to them and they shared cheerful teenager goodbyes before they turned and walked up the alley. Seiji crossed to the girl and she stood.

"Yo."  
"Hi."  
"Hey, I've got great news. Listen. The school is doing really well, Signore Guarnieri is really pleased with our progress. And because he's happy with our work he's arranged a day holiday for us all. Tomorrow."  
"Yay, that's great!"  
"And not just that, we're going to the seaside!"  
"Oooh, where?"  
"Ah, that would be telling! Pack your swimming things!"  
"I hate surprises! Tell me!"  
"Shan't. But if you wanted to see some Italian history, now's your chance," he winked mischievously and wore his crooked smile.

The next day they and the other students took a train from Cremona, one which Shizuku worked out was heading east and north. It transpired that Seiji had warned his classmates that his girlfriend might try and find out where they were going and all of them, much to her annoyance and his amusement, refused to tell her. A couple of the Italian boys had brought girls along with them and the journey turned into something of a party. The train travelled for over an hour and the group chattered animatedly. Then the train slowed, was stopping. A station name board came slowly into view outside the window. It read VENEZIA. Shizuku saw it and turned to Seiji.

"Venice! You brought us to Venice! Oh, Seiji, that's fantastic! Do you know how amazing this city is? The whole place is like a fairy tale city, built on the water!"

The other students laughed,

"Hey, it wasn't my choice, Signore Guarnieri paid for the tickets."  
"Today is going to be so special, I know it!"  
"Yeah, when I found out I knew you'd be pleased."

Outside the station the group stood at the top of the steps that led down to the piazza and faced the Grand Canal. Seiji spoke with them and then he and Shizuku said their goodbyes and set off to spend the day alone together. This was Seiji's decision but Shizuku agreed with it completely and she was pleased that he was in touch with her mood. They boarded a river bus which took them down the Grand Canal and across the lagoon to the Lido. Magnificent waterside buildings slid by, the canals were busy with small boats and Shizuku and Seiji leant on the side railing of the bus, their faces glowing with excitement.

The river bus docked at the Lido pier and the two young people walked off and into a maelstrom of tourists and taxis. Hotels, shops, restaurants and bars were all along the Lido water front. They spent the late morning exploring and lunched on pizza. In the early afternoon they went down to the Lido beach and swam in the sea. Many people were bathing and the girl and the boy played in the shallows; standing with the water up to their knees. They splashed one another and laughed. Seiji ran at Shizuku who tried to escape, squealing. He caught her and they fell together in the water laughing.

The two of them lay on towels on the sand, lying on their sides facing each other; Seiji lifted a hand and tenderly stroked her cheek. She smiled. These precious hours in Venice were, it turned out, the end of innocence. Events and forces were conspiring to bring this time without care to an end. In a city that has no tide, the tide was turning. Later in the day another river bus departed the Lido and headed out to Venice proper; Shizuku at the river bus' railing watched the _campinale_ of San Marco and the domes of the Doge's Palace in the distance.

The couple walked up a wide pavement thronged with tourists, the Grand Canal to their left with _gondolieri_ standing by the small piers in their famous striped shirts. Rows of gondolas were moored to their poles. Seiji considered taking one but unfortunately they were outrageously expensive. To the couple's right was the Piazza di San Marco, they turned and walked in. The piazza, was, as it usually is in August, heaving with people. The couple stood and marvelled at the buildings. Seiji got out his camera and took photos.

Shizuku stood in front of the Doge's Palace and Seiji took her picture. She stepped back and leaned against a stone pillar at one side of the doorway. She was wearing a short sleeved top and the bare skin of her arm touched the stone. She started in surprise and stood upright, rubbing her arm. She looked about herself in wonder and something like fear. Seiji pressed the shutter,

"Ah, you moved. I'll take another. Smile."

Shizuku was still rubbing her arm and looking worried, scared even. She stared about herself as if to be sure she was where she thought she was. Seiji lowered the camera from his eye,

"You OK?"  
She rubbed her skin as though were sore, "Yes, I think so."  
"What was it, something cut you?"  
"No. I don't know. Can we go and sit down somewhere?"  
"Sure, these crowds are bugging me a bit too. Let's find somewhere quiet."

They found a café in a narrower side lane. They sat at a table in the shade of a striped awning and Seiji got them ice creams. These stood uneaten on the table in glass bowls. There were a few minutes silence. The girl stared into her lap. The ice cream gently melted.

"Talk to me."  
"Seiji, I'm scared, something odd is going on."  
"Do you want to talk about it?"  
"I think so."

She took a spoonful of ice cream. She drew it off the spoon with her lips and swallowed absently as though she wasn't tasting it at all.

"In the taxi. In Milan. I don't understand what happened."

Seiji said nothing. This was a time to be silent and let her speak.

"It was night time. And yet when I looked out on that bridge I saw a scene in daylight. It wasn't my imagination. I was there. It was so weird, I can't describe it. It was like… like an opening in time and I could see through it, just for a few moments. I saw a factory and a canal as they were, oh, sixty years ago. Before the war anyway. I can even remember the name painted on one of the factories. I was looking at the scene as it was in the past."

Seiji looked at her carefully, his face open, his eyes calm.

"How can that happen? I've never heard of such a thing before."  
"You said something just before that, something about you'd been there before."  
"Yes, that's right. Just before I had that… vision… or whatever it was… I had this weird feeling. Like I knew the place, I knew the bridge was up ahead. It was like the strongest déjà vu I have ever felt. I just can't understand it."  
"What happened just now?"  
"The same thing, only worse, much worse. When I touched the building. I was suddenly in Saint Marks square but it was long ago, I mean _hundreds and hundreds_ of years ago. There were crowds of people…"

Speaking about it took her back there. Her eyes widened with surprise. People were behind her, around her in sixteenth century dress. Crowds filled both sides of the piazza. This was very long ago, renaissance times. The same buildings were around the piazza but without the boutiques, without the tourist information stand, without the cafés. Down the centre of the crowd was a clear space, this avenue being formed by two lines of soldiers standing at attention, holding military halberds upright. The soldiers wore steel skull caps, blue and red tabards, the coloured panels cut in a checkerboard fashion. They had steel guards on their forearms and wore tight soft leather gloves; red hose and soft boots. They faced inward, the thronging crowds behind them. The townspeople wore medieval dress; ladies in long skirts with tight bodices and tall conical caps with veils. Men with big beards wearing padded jackets with slashed sleeves that trailed low, puffed up padded cloth at the hips and hose of coloured silk. The citizens were all well dressed, it seemed the lower classes, the unwashed, had been kept away from this event.

Shizuku was there in the front row between two soldiers, townsfolk behind her. She wore her everyday clothes; a top, a skirt, sandals. She was next to the Doges Palace. Looking up at the palace steps and doorway she saw a group of men gathered there. Their clothing was very fine, they wore silks, jewels and furs. Among them were bishops and cardinals. One prominent nobleman wore a peculiar white conical hat almost like an Egyptian headdress. His face was pale, he had a long hooked nose. To her he did not appear happy. In fact he looked very unhappy, angry even. The men faced down the avenue, waiting. A group of people walked up the cleared aisle. At their head was an imposing man richly dressed in green velvet and wearing a crown. His right arm held out; a tall elegant lady rested her hand on his arm. Behind the royal couple a gaggle of other richly dressed courtiers and advisors followed. Before them walked three young men dressed in yellow and blue, carrying ceremonial trumpets.

Shizuku idly spooned ice cream into her mouth.

"What scared me is that I stood there about ten minutes and watched the scene. The man in the white hat was the Doge of Venice; the king was the Holy Roman Emperor, a German. It was a very important state visit. There was war coming, the crowd knew it. I could _feel_ it. Seiji – I even _heard_ their conversation! I was so afraid, I thought a soldier would notice me, that I wasn't dressed properly and he'd grab me. Then suddenly I was back among tourists again."  
"Did you say ten minutes?"  
"Yes, well it seemed like that."  
"You never went anywhere. You just leaned against the building and stood up again rubbing your arm. It was the blink of an eye."  
"I was so scared," she lowered her face and put her head in her hands,  
"Don't be. It's OK now, you're here – I'm here."  
"It frightens me Seiji. I don't know if it'll happen again. What if I touch an old building and never come back?"  
"I think it's your imagination, you aren't really travelling in time, you were here all along, you didn't vanish in a puff of smoke…"

Shizuku was suddenly angry, her voice raised, "Don't make fun of me! I was scared to death!"

"Sorry, I'm trying to help. What I mean is, you shouldn't be afraid, nothing will harm you."  
"I hate it. I don't like it happening. It's not the real me."

Some memory came to Seiji and something dawned in his eyes,

"I said that once: 'It's not the real me'"  
"What?"  
His voice was low, his thoughts deep, "My first violin. I was ten."

Shizuku looked at him, her eyes wet.

"I had just finished it," he frowned, "It was rubbish. I tried to play it but it sounded terrible. I cried and cried. All that work was a waste of time. I felt useless." He sighed, "Grandpa was with me. He took the violin and adjusted the stringing. Then he laid his bow across it and made a note come out. It was such a beautiful note. Like a bird singing. I couldn't believe the terrible violin I'd made could produce such a sound. Grandpa looked at me in the way he does. You know, so kind and patient? He said he had never before seen a violin so well made by someone so young. He said people sometimes have something mysterious inside them, some power. Many people go through their whole lives searching for something – money, success, love and they don't realise that the power to be what they want to be is inside them. They never find it and then they die unfulfilled. Grandpa said I had something inside, some skill that comes from he didn't know where. He said the crafting of that violin wasn't done by the hands of a ten year old."

Seiji smiled and shook his head, "You know what I said? I said 'Well I don't like it – it's not the real me.' It was a funny conversation."

Shizuku smiled, "Your grandfather spoke to me once like that. Last year…" her smile broadened at the irony, "…it was while you were here actually. I was worried about how badly my writing would turn out and he went into this long speech about looking inside myself and finding the gems of my writing ability and spending time polishing them."  
"Sounds just like grandpa."  
"That rock on my bedside cabinet in the hotel. You know that big old lump you noticed the other day? He gave me that. If you look in it you'll see there is a quartzite inside. He did this thing with a torch that lit the rock up inside. Made a big impression on me that did. He said the gemstones inside the rock are like the writing skills inside me. They are in there but it would be hard to find them and dig them out. And make them shine."  
"He can be like that. I can spend days and days with him and he's just an ordinary old man then one day – bang! He'll come out with something amazing! Something that makes you stop and think and really consider things. You know, consider the world around you in a different way."  
"He's a strange person, like two people really. He hasn't spoken to you about his time in Germany before the war has he? About when he met Luisa?"  
"No, he never mentioned anything about that. I had picked up hints and bits from mom but never the whole story."  
"And he's known you all your life. Yet he confided that story to me and we'd only met a few times. Strange – like two different people."  
"That night in the taxi in Milan, I think the power grandpa spoke to me about… I think you have something special in your mind, in your imagination. A power – uh – an ability. I don't know. Is it in the brain or in the spirit? But you seem to have something spiritual, other worldly, something ancient in you that lets you see places like no-one else can, lets you see through time even. Or what feels like seeing through time. It probably isn't but your imagination makes it feel like that. Mmm, I'm not saying this very well, am I?"  
"Go on. I'm following you."  
"If you can harness that ability then there is no stopping you in the amazing books you can write."  
"Do you think so?"  
"How else can you explain it? It wasn't time travel – you never moved! Don't be afraid. Learn to use that instinct. Hey, that toy plane we saw…"  
"It wasn't a toy, remember?"  
"Ah, well, you know," he smiled a smile of defeat on that point, "Well that was built before the war wasn't it? Maybe the factory you saw built planes like that one. There's a story in there you know."  
Shizuku considered this, "Hm... I wonder what sort of pilot flew a plane like that? What kind of man was he?"

She ate another spoonful of ice cream.

They finished their ice creams in silence. Seiji didn't feel this was something to keep picking away at. He'd helped (he hoped), and now it was for her to think about some more and see if what they'd said made sense. From the café they walked on and Seiji was happy that the mood changed. They walked the lanes, the courtyards, the bridges. They went to the Rialto Bridge and strolled up the steps and looked in the stalls there; elsewhere they looked in shop windows full of beautiful glass; stood on a small curved bridge and leaning on its parapet watched gondolas gliding beneath. Finally they made their way back toward Saint Marks to catch the river bus. They stopped and looked up at the Bridge of Sighs. It was late in the afternoon now and there was a golden quality to the light. Shizuku looked down, watching the light play on the water. Seiji looked at the Bridge of Sighs, the girl beside him was quiet again. He glanced at her. He could see only the back of her head, her face was downcast. He spoke softly,

"Hey."

She lifted her head to look at him.

"Think about what I said. Don't fear it, face it. It's no curse. Treat it as a blessing."  
"I'll try. It's just the strangeness of it that knocks the wind out of me. I've never heard of anything like this before."  
He turned to her, "Come here."

Shizuku went to him and he held her.

"It's because you're special. If the wind blows too hard, lean on me. You'll always have me."  
She looked up into his face, "Seiji Amasawa… I love you."  
He replied so softly he almost mouthed the words silently, "I love you, Shizuku."

Seiji lowered his head, slowly, slowly. Shizuku tilted hers back a little and closed her eyes. With infinite slowness, Seiji's face came closer to her upturned face. And there below the Bridge of Sighs we will leave them.


	20. Chapter 19 The Telephone Call

**Chapter Nineteen – The Telephone Call  
**  
The railway track had been built originally in the 1850s to carry coal. At first the trains were lumbering and slow. Later as steam trains became more efficient and men found themselves locked into a never ending circular dance with how fast they could travel and how little time they had in which to travel, the railway carried passengers more and more rapidly. Eventually the steam trains passed away and were replaced first by diesel locomotives and then by electric trains. Men always had to do more in less time.

This night an ordinary passenger train was moving rapidly along this line, just another unremarkable scheduled run among thousands. But this particular train interests us because riding in it, through the night were two special people. The boy in the window seat struggled with an issue that he didn't know how to resolve. It had been eating away at his insides, at his ability to reason, to make meaningful decisions about his life, for many months now. If he'd had the strength to look deeper he may have been dismayed to find that really this problem went back years, almost as far back as he had a logical mind with which to examine it. He was tired, too tired to deal with this now. He just wanted this problem to go away.

He looked at the girl beside him. She dozed, cuddled up to him. Her face was without worry, the face of a child, relaxed in sleep, vulnerable, beautiful. For her sake he knew he needed an answer to his difficulty, the problem had to have a solution. He stared out the window, his face reflected in the glass. The other students either dozed or talked quietly respecting the Japanese couples' space. Henri, the Frenchman offered Seiji a sweet which he took with a nod of thanks. Slipping the mint in his mouth he returned his attention to his reflection in the window and the scudding night beyond it. Outside as the last tendrils of daylight faded from the sky the countryside was quiet and the beauty of a summers dusk lay over everything.

The delivery boy on his bicycle waited at the un-gated pathway crossing. A train was coming, it honked its horn and swept by, the stone ballast chippings on the track jumped and clattered as it passed. For fractions of seconds faces were visible, the boy watched these fragments of lives go by. The flashing red tail lamp on the last coach receded into the evening twilight. Whistling a pop song to himself the boy pedalled his bike across the wooden board crossing and went on his way. Apart from the chirping of cicadas, all was quiet and still. Then on the far side of the track there was movement. A fox appeared through some long grasses at the trackside fence. It stopped and sniffed the air. Then looking around, it ran across the tracks stepping nimbly over the rails. It vanished into the bushes on the near side.

The moon had come up, a harvest moon, huge, red and mysterious rising over the misty fields. Seiji watched it, frowning.

"What are you? A guiding light, a lantern leading me on, or something else? Some other force I don't understand?"

Back at the courtyard in Cremona Seiji and Shizuku said goodnight to the other students. They couple waited until the others had gone. Before they could say their goodnights however, the school door opened again. The old caretaker, Fabrizio was there.

"Signorino Amasawa?"  
"Si?"  
"Più presto questa sera là era una telefonata per voi, esso era il vostro padre, il Signore Amasawa."  
"Grazie, grazie," he turned to Shizuku, "My father phoned earlier, I should call him back."  
"Oh," she was all at once fearful. Telephone calls at this distance when Seiji would be home soon anyway – they could never be good news.

The hallway of the violin school was a magnificent place, all polished stone floors and dark wood panelling. On a small table at the foot of a staircase was an old style black telephone with a dial, not buttons. Signore Fabrizio offered Seiji the phone. Seiji picked up the handset, thought for a moment about the international code for Japan, then dialled. He wasn't familiar with dial phones and messed it up so he put the receiver down and dialled again. Fabrizio may have been a bit mad but at least he was a true gentleman and he retired to another room out of earshot. Shizuku came close to Seiji, worried.

"Hello? Yes, hello, father? It's Seiji."

A man's voice answered, tinny with distance.

"When?"

Seiji put one hand on the banister at the foot of the staircase, he seemed to lean into it for support. The tinny voice spoke again.

"Well, how is he?"

More voice. Seiji turned and sat down on the bottom stair. Shizuku squatted down before him. She put a hand on his knee and gazed up into his face. There was already pain and upset on it. Seiji's voice took on an odd wavering tone,

"I think I should come straight home. Yes? Yes, I'll come. Tomorrow – or as soon as I can get a plane seat. Alright, yes. Thank you, thank you," he looked at Shizuku, "Yes, I think two seats. Can you arrange that for us? Thanks. How is mother? OK, well, yes. I'll be there as soon as I can."

There was a pause.

"Dad? If anything happens, you know, if there is more… news… you'll phone me straight away, yes? Look, take this number…" (Seiji gave a phone number) "…yes that's the Japan Airlines desk at Milan airport. Phone there if I have left, they should be able to get a message to me. OK, dad, yes, sure, I understand. Goodbye."

He put down the phone. The girl looked at him more worried than ever. He slowly put his elbows on his knees, and rested his forehead in his hands. He slid his fingers up through his hair. Shizuku tried to dip her head down to see his face but he kept it hidden so she got up and sat next to him on the stair. She put an arm around him. There was a long moment of silence. Finally the boy spoke to the floor in a voice that Shizuku had never heard before and which made her more afraid than ever,

"It's grandpa. He's collapsed. A heart attack. He's really ill. I have to leave for home right away."

She put her other arm across his chest under his arms and laced her fingers together around his far shoulder and held him. Silently, his shoulders began to shake. Shizuku held on tight.


	21. Chapter 20 The Fountain

**Chapter Twenty – The Fountain  
**  
She was in the reception area of the Hotel Alfonso. In the dining room next door guests were finishing their meals, Marco waiting at tables. For everyone else on the planet life went on while for her and the boy she loved, everything disintegrated. A clock above reception told us it was 10:20. Tony, behind the desk, leaned on it looking concerned. Shizuku stood before him speaking into a telephone. She ran her fingers through her hair nervously.

"Hello? Hello, Anna-Marie? It's Shizuku. I'm very sorry. Yes it is late, I'm sorry. There has been bad news, its Mr. Nishi back in Japan, he has been taken ill. Very ill. Yes. No. Yes that's right. In a hospital, yes. Yes, we are going right away. Tomorrow. I'm afraid so. But… look, I don't know how to best say this, so I will just say it – can you come? Can you bring your mother? I know she is ill but I'm so afraid. I'm scared that this may be their last chance to meet," tears ran down her face as she spoke, "Yes I know, I know, I'm so sorry. But it has to be tomorrow. Yes, have you a pen? OK. Its Japan Airlines flight JL418 from Milano Linate airport to Tokyo Narita. Yes. It takes off at 9:20 in the evening. Here is the number of the Japan Airlines check-in…" (she gave a number) "Please say you are flying with Mr Amasawa and Miss Tsukishima, you should be able to get seats with us. Well, that's it. No, I'm OK. Really. I hope we see you at the airport? Goodbye."

She put down the phone and stared at it. The tears continued to run. Quietly to herself she said,

"Oh grandpa, please be alright."

She looked up at Tony,

"May I make one more call? This is to Japan. I promise I'll be quick."

Tony merely pushed the phone toward her a little and smiled kindly,

"She-zoo-koo, you use Alfonso telephone as long as you like. I go for coffee."

She watched his vast back disappear through the PRIVATO door. She picked up the phone again, dialled, there was a long wait while across the planet wires sent pulses and computers linked the message request under thousands of miles of sea. A faint ringing, then the phone was picked up at the other end and a familiar voice answered. His voice was so wonderful to hear and she realised for the first time how much in the last three weeks she had missed him.

"Hi, Dad. Hi. It's me. Yes, oh yes, sorry to wake you. What time is it there? OK, well, I'm calling to let you know we'll be coming home a couple of days early. We should be there in the evening the day after tomorrow. No, no. No problem here, it's just that…" and then she was unable to speak any more, the tears that had been flowing silently now choked her and she couldn't make the words come out past them. She eventually managed to continue that conversation, to finish it but it took all the calming influence of the man at the other end to get her there, for her to make sense.

The scene shifted and changed, the shadows faded. The clock hands still showed 10:20. It was the same room, the same view but now it was morning. Bright bands of sunlight lay where before there had been shadow. She stood again before the desk. As usual Tony filled the space behind. She signed a form.

"Signore Tony, grazie, molte grazie."  
"She-zoo-koo. It is not Mr. Tony, eh? Just 'Tony', eh?"  
"Thank you, Tony. I loved it here. It was a lovely room. I will keep such good memories of staying here. And you are so kind. I will come again."  
"Ha! I wait for you. And for you She-zoo-koo, is no problem, eh?"

There was a loud noise and down the stairs clumping and grunting came Marco. He wore his waiter's clothes and he brought down Shizuku's huge bag. He dragged it to the centre of the reception floor. The girl opened her purse, found some money, this time it was paper money, several notes. She gave Marco the tip,

"Marco, grazie. Va bene così?"

Marco looked at the notes in his hand. He looked up at Shizuku, gave her a curt nod and a grunt. He went bright pink and disappeared quickly through the PRIVATO door. Tony burst into laughter.

"Ehi, Marco! Ti vuole bene!" to Shizuku he said, "Hey, he nodded. He likes you!"  
"Tony, I must go. Arrivederci!"

Tony, still smiling, came round from behind the desk and opened the door,

"Arrivederci, cara Signorina."

He bowed and she bowed in return.

"In Japan. Is that how you say goodbye?"  
"Yes."  
"In Italia, we say goodbye like this," he reached for her hand, lifted it and kissed the back of it.  
"Goodbye in Italia is better, yes?"  
"Oh, Tony, yes, I think it is."  
"Be in good care now."

In the courtyard a taxi stood by the horse trough. It was a surprise to Shizuku that it even fitted down the alleyway. Seiji was beside it. He spoke with a distinguished silver haired gentleman. As she came out of the hotel, the boy and the man shook hands. The man made a strange fatherly gesture and laid one hand on Seiji's shoulder, squeezed slightly. Then he walked to the school and went inside. She went up to the taxi,

"Well, here I am. All ready."  
"Hi. OK, well, I suppose we'd better go."

The driver squeezed her big bag into the small car. Seiji took one final look at the school, troubled, to himself, he said

"Every time I come to Cremona, I leave a day early."

Something suddenly occurred to Shizuku, something both hopelessly trivial and yet at the same time it was, at this moment, the most important thing in the world. She reached into the taxi, unzipped her pink bag and retrieved her purse. She turned to the driver,

"Tassista, può aspettare quindiciminuti per favore?"  
"Si, si non c'è problema."

Seiji watched her,

"What are you doing?"  
"Seiji, come with me. It's not far."

She took his hand and led him at a fast walk up the alley,

"Where are we going? There's no time. The taxi."  
"The flight isn't 'til this evening. We've all day. This won't take ten minutes, and it's important."  
"What? Now?"  
"Yes, now."

She led him by the hand from the alley, across a main road, down another street and then cutting through small alleys that were now so familiar that she nodded her good mornings to the lady who swept her steps, she turned up a sloping street of antique shops,

"There's no time for this."  
"Ssshh, for this we make time."

They passed Anna-Marie's shop, Seiji thought they might go in but although it was open, Shizuku ignored it and went on, walking faster now. At the top of the hill was the piazza. And the fountain. She led him up to it and stopped. For a few moments they stood, hand in hand, saying nothing. Seiji watched the water gush and gurgle down over the unicorn's head and wash across the fat stone cherubs' little round backs. Despite the tens or hundreds of years the water must have flowed here he could see the freshness with which the little figures were carved, their cute baby faces, at the same time both young in form and ancient in expression. They didn't smile but were so serious, so sad. He knew it was an artistic convention to make the faces serious and the stone masons probably hadn't intended an emotion here but suddenly he felt it. He could feel the stonemason's personality, his intent, his spirit, his heart. Seiji connected at once with what the artisan had thought when he carved those faces, he may well have understood that what he was doing would survive long after his time and would be looked upon by people hundreds of years in the future.

Something powerful came over Seiji as he stood, holding Shizuku's hand and looking at the exquisite stonework of the cherubs' bodies. Something about his purpose touched him and he felt a link to his grandpa, a man who had devoted his life to repairing things he considered of value, things of quality, things that would bring pleasure to people many, many years in the future. In a way the violin making class in grandpa's workshop was the same thing - the old man was carving cherubs. His teaching would be passed to his young pupils and even if just one of the class went on to make just one violin that would be played a hundred, two hundred years from now, then his effort would have been worthwhile. Seiji imagined a concert hall two hundred years after his own death with one of his violins being played and five thousand people transported to a make believe world by the sound. To give that gift to people not yet born, now _that_ was something worth doing. His thoughts turned again to his worries, to the dream that troubled him night after night. The violin making thing _was _a problem, it had to be resolved one way or the other. He really needed to talk about this. Talk to her, he had to use her as a sounding board. But not right now, this wasn't the time.

"I don't suppose you have any idea how old this fountain is do you?" he asked,  
She turned her head and looked at him, "Yes, as it happens I do. I was here the other day looking at it and thought how beautiful it was. So I went to the library and looked up some local history."  
"And?"  
"Well, this piazza has been here for hundreds of years but it seems the fountain isn't as old as the piazza. According to a local history book it was built in 1667."  
"This fountain is over 300 years old?"  
"Well, maybe not this one exactly. The figurines in it were last replaced in 1716."  
"_Aranyi_," Seiji spoke the word softly, as though it were a prayer.  
"What did you say?"  
"_Aranyi_. It's the namesake of the oldest known Stradivarius in existence. It was made in 1667. He was only twenty-three. The same year someone built this fountain. And 1716 was when he was at the height of his skill, Stradivari produced his finest work here, in this city in the early 1700s. Heh," he chuckled, "for all we know he may even have stood here and listened to this water."  
"His violins have names? I never knew that."  
"Oh, not when they were made. They are modern names, mostly. Well, modern in that they were given in the last hundred years or so. Usually an instrument is named after an owner or a famous violinist who performed on it. _Oistrakh, Cipriani, Arma Senkrah, Auer, Cabriac, Castelbarco, Boissier._"

The names rolled off his tongue like an ancient language, beautiful names, beautiful sounds. The Japanese in him meant some of the pronunciation was broken; he had real trouble annunciating some of the sounds and many of the names were mangled and would have sounded funny to an Italian listener, but in his heart the names weren't mangled and that was what counted. Listening to him say the names Shizuku felt almost as though he were playing a violin itself.

"You know _all_ the names?" she was amazed  
"No. Not all of them, but most. And the dates he made them. There are fewer than 700 known Strads in existence now. There were more at the beginning of the century but some were lost in World War One and World War Two. It makes me so angry, war is so ugly and stupid – the exact opposite of a Strad. Hm…well… I'm off again, rambling," he smiled, "Many violin makers and scholars know the names, its part of getting under the skin of the subject."  
"That's amazing," she spoke in a hushed tone, she was genuinely awed by his commitment to the subject.

A few moments went by, she could feel the taxi waiting. They had to go - the tide was pulling them - but she didn't want to go.

"Are you afraid?"  
"Of grandpa dying?"  
"Mm."  
"Yes, of course. He's everything to me. I lean on him so hard."  
"Well, I understand that. But. Hm, this is hard to say without me sounding rude and insensitive."  
"I'm listening."  
"How can I say this? Seiji - he won't always be there. You know? If the worst happens you need to move on, you can't be dragged down."  
"I know, but you're not me. You don't know what grandpa means to me. Look, there's things I need to tell you but no time for them now. We can talk on the plane I hope."  
"Seiji, what I'm saying is... well, _I'm_ here. If grandpa isn't there one day, please use me instead. I'm not very good at encouraging and supporting and I'll probably cry too much but I'll try my best," she looked at him shyly, "As it's you,"  
He looked at her, "I understand what you're saying. Thank you. You're very kind. Shizuku, I appreciate you in more ways than you know."  
"You say he's everything to you. Well... I want that job."

She squeezed his hand, he squeezed back.

"That's my special squeeze," she said, "I don't do it for just anyone."  
"You did one the other night, on the way back from the _Museo Stradivariano_. I remember."  
"We need to go."  
"I know."  
"But before we do..." she let go of his hand and opened her purse, she gave him a coin, and took one out for herself.  
"And this is for...?"  
"Make a wish."

She closed her eyes and threw her coin into the fountain. It plopped into the water and sank wobbling down to the bottom where it lay among others thrown in by people before her. Seiji closed his eyes. He rubbed his fingers across the coin. _She touched this, it's too precious to throw away._ It was a silly thought. There were so many things to wish for right now, but one thing surfaced above all the others. He wanted to wish for grandpa but there was another thing not involving grandpa and he knew grandpa would understand. It was a good thing to wish for, it was right. He threw his coin. He kept his eyes shut and heard it _plop_ into the water. When he opened them his coin had already come to rest and he could no longer tell which one it was.

"What did you wish for?"  
He looked at her again, "You know I'm not supposed to tell. It breaks the wish."  
"I was just curious," she smiled,  
"When it comes true, I'll tell you," he smiled back,  
"When? Or if?"  
"When."

She reached for his hand again and they turned to go.

In the doorway of the Café Volpi stood Adamo. He had been standing there some minutes watching the Japanese girl and boy. He'd seen them walk up and had been about to come over and greet them when he noticed something about the way they were acting. They were in a closed world, a world where only the two of them existed, a private place. He knew this world, he could tell from how they were behaving that this was a world only for lovers. So he didn't interrupt but merely watched, fascinated as they acted out some unknown but intense cameo before him. He saw them drop coins in the fountain, he'd seen so many couples do just that and it made him smile. When they turned and left he wondered when they'd be back. As it turned out he didn't see them again for a whole year, but they did come back, and he was waiting for them.

Their visit of the following year was brief but it was four years later, when they came again to Cremona, in 1999, and this time they didn't leave. Then, some years again after that was when Seiji brought _her_ by the hand to this fountain and was able to tell her what he had wished for.

And she told him.


	22. Chapter 21 Push and Pull

**Chapter Twenty One – Push and Pull  
**

Their taxi entered Milan and took them to Linate Airport. It was almost three hours drive but they had plenty of time, the flight didn't leave until that evening. They had a whole day to kill, to sit and think about things. That was the last thing Seiji wanted right now. They were in the departure lounge. They sat. To make the time go by they chatted about anything and everything, just idle incidental things of no importance whatsoever. Seiji wanted to avoid the important things, he just needed to have his mind kept off them now. Shizuku never even realised it but this was the first time that when he needed her, I mean _really_ needed her, he leaned on her. Some time after this when I'd spoken to him about it and got his side of the story I told her how important that rambling daft conversation was, the silly jokes, the nonsense, the trivial word games they played and I told her how good she was at holding up a collapsing person. You should have seen the expression on her face (it makes me smile now), she didn't believe me. _That sort of thing doesn't count_, was her response. But I know from him, how much he appreciated her help that day. She was good at this, and the best part of her was she just did it without realising.

But there came a time, in the evening, about seven o'clock when things began to unravel. They'd walked around the airport, eaten, drunk, exhausted their supply of jokes, played the arcade machines until they'd spent the last of their money. Then, tired and run down like old clockwork toys they finally sat. At any time they feared an announcement calling Mr. Amasawa to the Japan Airlines desk for a phone call. But no call came. That was good news. He curled up in her arms and dozed. He couldn't sleep, he was too full of things, he ached inside too much and besides the airport chairs were a bloody stupid design and just too bloody uncomfortable. Then she did something that surprised even her; she broke one of her own rules. She reached into her bag and drew out one of her manuscripts and even though the story wasn't finished she began to read it to him, unpolished lumps and all. Seiji stopped thinking. He closed his eyes and listened. For an hour, one beautiful hour between seven and eight, he forgot his worries and was taken to the wonderful world that existed in her head.

And it was then, about eight in the evening that Anna-Marie and Luisa arrived. The girl and the boy didn't see them at first and for a few minutes the black haired lady stood behind the wheelchair and listed to the lovely gentle musical sound of the girl reading something in Japanese. Then Shizuku saw them, stopped and stood up. Anna-Marie came to her and gave her a long hard hug. Seiji walked over to Luisa and held her hand.

The journey was mundane, they boarded the plane, it took off. This time it wasn't anywhere near as much fun. This time the distance, the journey, the ticking clock, were just inconvenient. They sat in the centre block of four seats and as Luisa was disabled they were allocated a row where a transverse aisle ran in front of them so that the elderly lady had plenty of room. Seiji was on one end of the row, Shizuku beside him, Luisa beside her and Anna-Marie at the other end. For a long while Shizuku held Luisa's hand. It was night. There was an almost full moon, huge and silver, in its cold light the plane seemed to glow like precious metal. Far below, the clouds were like dreams. The Milky Way, far brighter and clearer than seen from near any city, lay across the sky like a million diamonds. The jet smoothly and tirelessly carried its precious cargo. Hundreds of lives. Hundreds of lifetimes.

The lights of the cabin had been dimmed. Most passengers were sleeping, one or two read or listened to music on headphones. A couple of workaholic men tapped away at laptops; their faces lit by the blue-white screen light, looked liked men already dead. Anna-Marie was asleep under a blanket. Next to her Luisa had a magazine open on her lap but her head lay to one side and she dozed, a pair of reading glasses on the end of her nose. Shizuku was curled to her right facing Seiji who curled up to his left, their heads were close together, their faces just inches apart. Seiji talked in a low monotone. He hardly knew what he was talking about, he rambled on about anything that came into his head, he was doing a mental spring clean, dumping out the rubbish,

"…and that was his problem. Baseball, baseball, always baseball. He never seemed to notice his friends dropping away one by one. It was crazy. I don't see him anymore. He still lives two streets away but he might as well be on Mars."

He sighed and was silent for a while. Now was the time, there never would be another. It had to be now, before they returned to Tokyo. He knew that when they landed there would be things to do and the tide of events would overtake them, carry them on. It had to be now.

"I remember that day last September, during the first week of school. I think it was a Monday. Do you?"

Shizuku looked into his eyes. She said nothing.

"You passed me in the corridor with your friend. What was her name again?"  
"Yuko."  
"Yuko, that was it. You still see her don't you?"  
"Of course, we talk on the phone all the time, but she went to Suginomiya High School, so we don't get to meet so often now."

He smiled, recalling the memory, tasting it, turning it over in his mind,

"I knew you were looking at me. You looked like you could've killed me. I said nothing, I didn't even look you in the eye."  
Now it was her turn to smile, "I remember. I was so mad at you. You made fun of my song lyrics."  
"That was it, yes. Hm. Seems years ago doesn't it? Do you know why I said nothing, and didn't look at you?"

She asks the question with her eyes.

"I was with my father."  
Shizuku's eyes widened, "That man was your father?"  
"Yes, he came to the school to discuss my taking two months off to come to Italy. He didn't want me to go at all. He was in a foul mood that day. So, you see, how could I even look at you? You might have said something, then I would have had to introduce you and in the horrible mood he was in there was no way I wanted to risk another argument."  
"That bad huh?"  
"Mm, that bad. Shizuku, how do you get on with your dad?"  
"OK. He's pretty strict, and he always lets me know who is in charge but he's very fair too. I was closer to him a year or so back – these days I rely on mom more; you know, girl stuff," she smiled, and Seiji understood, "But dad's still a really cool guy. He works _so hard_, and still finds time for mom and me. I have tons of respect for him for that. But I can talk to him about things. I have lunch with him in the library some days."  
"That must be great."  
"Yeah, he's pretty cool."  
"I hate father."

Shizuku's eyes widened even more in surprise.

"Seiji! You can't mean that!"  
"Can't I? You're not his son. He's a selfish, manipulating, driven, domineering…" he tailed off, his jaw set in anger, "We argue all the time. I hate him."

Shizuku looked afraid and covered her open mouth with one hand. Behind her Luisa opened her eyes. She was listening.

"Amasawa Electronics. His company makes computer components, all sorts of stuff," he sat up, unfolded his legs, pulled his wallet out of a back pocket, flipped it open and retrieved a photo. He curled up again, "Here. He's in the middle, huh… that's predictable. Mom on the left, my brother Kouji on the right. I'm the one at the back. You see, the one who looks like he'd rather be somewhere else."

Shizuku studied the picture. It showed a family in the front garden of a house, a driveway and cars behind them.

"Is this your house?"  
"Uh-huh."  
"Wow, it's _huge_. _How_ many cars?"  
"I couldn't care less how many. It's a very successful company. He sells to big factories, hospitals and so on. Computer networks and such like. I'm not really interested. Ever since I can remember Kouji and I have just been tools in his toolbox. He groomed us to take over from him and when he retires he wants us to manage the company. I think he plans stuff all the time. My name… the Kanji character means 'Holy Governor', he even planned for me to be a leader the day he named me. I hate him for that," Seiji chuckled, "Then one day Kouji really messed things up."

He slipped the photo back in his wallet and returned it to his jeans pocket.

"He became a dropout. Boy, was that a shock. He's a great photographer, very good. He's had pictures published in magazines. He finished high school and took a year out before going on to university. He went to Thailand with some friends. Heh, well these friends turned out to be a bunch of hippies, they did drugs and all kinds of stuff. Kouji got mixed up in it bad. He got a girl pregnant. Dad of course went mental, he went off like a bomb. Life was impossible for weeks. I actually moved in with grandpa for about a month. Eventually things cooled off a bit but it seemed Kouji liked it out there. Last I heard he opened a photographic studio in Bangkok and does wildlife photography. Doing well now, he even takes tourists on photographic tours. He's over the hippy thing but he's not coming back. No university. No el-presidente of Amasawa Electronics. Bye, bye and goodnight."  
"Oh, Seiji, that means…"  
"Yeah, now I'm dad's number one target for him to put pressure on. Shizuku, I hate it at home, I don't have a proper life, its nag, nag, nag, study, study, study _all_ the time. I'm trapped in a prison. I'm going crazy. My face may look calm, I may look relaxed but inside…" he made a growl of frustration, his hand became a fist.

Shizuku reached out and covered the fist with her hand.

"Did you ever wonder why I always seem to be at grandpa's shop? I spend as much time there as I can. I've been going there for years, as soon as I was old enough to go out alone on my bike. Since I was about six I think. I sleep there when I can. Some days I used to just sit and watch him work. I loved that, seeing his hands do amazing things, I could watch him for hours. Broken old furniture would be transformed. Heh, you think it's magic me making a violin pop out of a piece of wood? Well you should see grandpa do his stuff. Furniture comes to him as little more than firewood. Six months later it's beautiful, like the day the original craftsman made it. Hence the violin making. Grandpa has held violin making classes for years. One day when I was about nine I decided to try it. Took me the best part of a year to finish my first one and, well, you know that story already."  
"Oh, my poor Seiji… why did you keep all this in?"  
"And that's why the apprenticeship trip last year was so important to me. I was escaping. I was free of his tyranny for eight glorious weeks. I was like a zoo animal taken back to the wild and set free. I have never produced such good work as I did those two months in Cremona last year."

He paused and looked through Shizuku to some distant place. His eyes narrowed and self-loathing filled his face.

"And of course there's the problem, right there. I came back from Italy and thought about stuff for ages, turning it over and over in my head. Looking at it this way and that way. And no matter which way I looked at it, it always looked the same. And last night on the way back from Venice I worked it out. The violin making isn't me doing something I want to do. It's me doing something so I can avoid doing something else I _don't_ want to do. Violin making isn't pulling me Shizuku, it's hatred of dad that's _pushing_ me. I'm not a great violin maker. I'm not even good. I stink. What I am good at is running away from dad, running away from my responsibilities. Hell, just running away."  
"Seiji, oh, Seiji, don't," She raised her voice,  
"I can't do something if my love of it isn't pure and honest and genuine. Violin making is a sham, a cover, a lie. I realise now that it's not something I chose to do but something I was pushed into doing as a means to escape my father. I hate it for what it represents. I don't know what to do, but I'm thinking I should give it up."  
She sat up and took his hand in hers, "Stop it! Stop it! You don't know what you're saying!"  
"Yes I do Shizuku. I've thought about this for a long time."

She put her hands on his shoulders and actually shook him, her voice was raised now, one or two other passengers were looking round, listening. Luisa's heart was beating fast, what were they talking about?

"Seiji Amasawa, don't you ever, _ever_ dare talk like that! I don't want to hear it! You're talking complete rubbish. Aah! You make me so angry! Its plain as the nose on you face that you've got great skill and even more potential as a violin maker! Seiji - remember I was the one always following you, you were one step ahead. I looked up to you so much. You inspired me. Violin making is a fine craft and something you were made to do. Remember that day you met me outside the shop with Moon? You took me in to see the Baron. Afterwards I came downstairs…"

Her voice trailed off, now her eyes were wet. She continued more quietly, more gently,

"I saw you working. I watched your hands making the violin. I could see the skill," she laughed, really it was half laugh-half sigh, "Even though I didn't even know your name or anything about you I think I fell in love with you at that moment."

She laughed again, a little embarrassed. She leaned forward, slid her hands from his shoulders down his back and drew him up to her. She held him against her chest and he lowered his face into her. She stroked his hair.

"…and watching you working… it was your hands I fell in love with first. How you were drawn to that craft isn't important, what _is_ important is your skill and your commitment to it. Be true to yourself, don't let go of something – don't let yourself hate it just because you see it as something driven by your war against your father. You think it's him that's driven you to violin making? Do you? You can't live under his shadow all your life. He can't be allowed to affect your every life-decision. So don't give up just because you detect his hand in it, don't you see? You're letting him manipulate your decisions even _now_. Seiji, you're strong and skilful, use those gifts for the purpose they were given you. It's nothing to do with your father. Oh, how can I make you see this? You said so yourself in Venice. Grandpa saw it in you years ago. What he saw wasn't hatred of your father, it was something else completely. Grandpa saw the real you, didn't he? Didn't he? Even then, when you were ten, you denied it. Stop running away, Seiji."

Luisa, silent, listened. She could hardly understand a word the young Japanese people were saying. She was able to pick up a few words that Shirou had taught her and which had lain in her memory from since before the war, but she could feel the emotions at work and knew that something important was happening right here next to her. She could feel the love the young lady was pouring out, pouring into this moment, and she could hear the fear, the anger and unhappiness in the young man's voice. Shizuku knelt up now in her seat, facing Seiji. His hands came around her, moved slowly up her back and held her in return. His fingers dug into her and he held on tight, squeezing. His face was buried in her shirt, his eyes tight shut. Shizuku's eyes too were shut and a tear squeezed out from under her eyelids. She opened her eyes. Standing beside them in the aisle was her father, he stood just behind Seiji's seat and smiled kindly at her. A stewardess walked right through him but this didn't seem to bother him. He spoke: _Consider each moment and use it. You never know what each minute brings, each one, trivial in itself may be the turning point, the source of great things, great changes._

Shizuku spoke through her tears, "Oh. Something… Yes, my dad said something to me the day we left Tokyo. About the value of time and grasping the moment. I think… I understand now what he meant. This is one of those times Seiji, one of those passing moments that are really, really important. Please… hold onto this moment, remember what I said."

She was crying openly now.

"Oh, I'm no good at this, look at me. Crying like a baby. I can't guide you…"  
"A guiding light."  
"What?"  
"It doesn't matter,"

He held on tight. He pulled his face away from her. She looked down at him and her tears fell from her face onto his.

Luisa smiled and closed her eyes.


	23. Chapter 22 You're Always Leaving

**Chapter Twenty Two – "You're always leaving"  
**  
Seiji had been right about the jet lag. The eastward flight was very strange with time seeming to be compressed into itself, Shizuku found she was adjusting her watch forwards so often that time seemed to run through her fingers like sand. As they descended on their approach to Narita the captain advised them of heavy rain over the capital. During the landing Shizuku could see even from her seat in the middle of the aircraft the rain flowing over the cabin windows. They landed at about five in the afternoon but it seemed like several hours later, it was so dark. There were heavy storm clouds overhead, flat, the colour of lead. It was raining heavily, pouring down. They were walking towards the arrivals exit and outside the glass walls of the airport building she could see the rain continuing to fall like a monsoon. Anna-Marie pushed Luisa in her wheelchair. In the arrivals lounge they met Dr. Amasawa. Behind him parked outside was a shiny new people carrier. Seiji bowed to him and introduced Luisa, Anna-Marie and lastly, Shizuku. Dr. Amasawa bowed to the two ladies but his greeting to Shizuku was minimal. He took charge, it seemed to be his natural condition,

"We should go direct to the hospital. Mrs. Baroni, are you able to travel there now? Yes. That's good. Miss Tsukishima I will take you home."  
"Please, no. I would like to come. I'll phone my parents from there."

The journey to the hospital was one Shizuku wanted to just forget, to wipe from her memory. If she could have been somewhere else, anywhere else, she would have wished it. Seiji was distant, closed in on himself, he stared out the window. She took his hand but it remained limp in hers, she could get no reaction from him. The rain never let up for a moment, the traffic crawled and her spirit was crushed by the long tiring flight. They pulled up outside the hospital, the journey of less than ten miles had taken an hour. The hospital was an ugly faceless block, a 1950s concrete slab, tasteless. Without the windows it could be the tomb of a giant.

Inside they walked along white corridors: merciless lighting, too warm, and that hospital smell; a nauseating mixture of sick people and cleaning fluids. Shizuku pushed Luisa's wheelchair. Dr. Amasawa led the group, Anna-Marie beside him in hushed conversation. Seiji brought up the rear looking unhappy. They went into a lift. As in all lifts, the conversation froze. Each of them had a small personal space around them, a wall that none would break down. The lift seemed to take ages. Shizuku was screaming inside, she couldn't take much more of this. The lift doors opened. Beyond, in the corridor, was a doctor. He spoke at once in those neutral sober tones that doctors the world over seem to have cultivated,

"Mr. Amasawa? I am very sorry. It is bad news. Your father in law died an hour ago, your wife is with him now, do please go straight in."

He walked down the corridor a few yards and indicated a doorway with his arm. Seiji's father went with him and the two men went in. The small group moved to a waiting area. There were a few chairs, some low tables, a water cooler, piles of magazines. Anna-Marie, Luisa, Shizuku and Seiji. For a while each was an island. The one person nation of each island took in what they had just heard. No-one sat, no one talked. Anna-Marie took Luisa's hand. The worst thing of all was that Shizuku had to translate. She hadn't learned the Italian word for 'dead', it had seemed she'd never need it, which of course three weeks ago was quite understandable. Now she had to perform the most awful task she'd ever had in her life. She wanted to show Anna and Luisa that she was close to them but she just didn't have the language. Instead, squatting down in front of the wheelchair, she spoke in English,

"Luisa, Shirou is gone. An hour ago. Do you understand?"

It needed only the look in the old lady's eyes to tell her that she did. She had been through so much in her long life and it seemed she could no longer cry. Her eyes remained dry and bright. Shizuku looked back over her shoulder at Seiji who stood by a window, his back to the room. She felt the touch of Luisa's hand on her arm and she looked back at the old lady,

"Go to him, child."

Shizuku smiled her thanks to Luisa and went to comfort Seiji. She stood beside him and looked into his face. Inexplicably the moment came in their relationship when he hurt her most. He turned away and looked out the window. Several floors below traffic passed on the street. The cars had their headlights on in the gloom of the storm. The city lights were blurred and mingled by the rainwater that flowed down the window. She stood behind him, helpless. She wanted to comfort him but was confused by his rejection. She held her hands in front of herself wringing them. Seiji's shoulders began shaking as he cried silently. Shizuku reached out a hand to touch him but then stopped and let it fall.

The ward doors opened and three heads turned to see who it was. Only the boy remained facing the window. Mrs. Amasawa came out. She went to her son and he turned to her, his face very red; she held him. A minute went by, the others suddenly found something interesting about their shoes. Then Mrs. Amasawa looked at Shizuku and beckoned her with an out-held arm. She moved forward and Mrs. Amasawa hugged her too. The girl put one arm round the woman and one round the boy. They held onto each other for a while. Mrs. Amasawa then pulled away. She took one of her son's hands and one of the girl's and put them together. It was a simple gesture of the mother to the son accepting the girlfriend as her daughter. She nodded silently and smiled. Shizuku looked uncertainly at Seiji, his face was still downcast. Mrs. Amasawa turned to Luisa and Anna-Marie, she bowed to them. She knelt in front of the wheelchair, her English was perfect,

"I am Yumiko Amasawa, Seiji's mother. You must be Luisa, I have heard so much about you from Shizuku, she has written to me. And of course my father would talk of you sometimes. I am so very sorry, this is such a difficult time. But you are very welcome to stay with us for as long as you wish."

Luisa reached out and took her hands. After a moment Mrs. Amasawa rose and faced Anna-Marie who introduced herself. The women talked in muted tones which the others could not overhear. The ward doors opened again and Dr. Amasawa came out and stood to one side a little way down the corridor. He was even now in a time of family grief a cold and distant person. His wife went to him and they spoke. She came back.

"You may go in."

The hospital bedroom was gloomy, only a side light above the bed was on and the blinds were drawn to shut out the dismal evening. Mr. Nishi lay on his back, his arms folded on his chest, one hand cupping the other. He looked at peace, as though sleeping. Luisa let out a little cry and touched his face.

"Oh, Shirou, you are as handsome now as the day you left on the train. But why are you always leaving me?"

Seiji placed a hand on her shoulder. Shizuku went to the other side of the bed and folded down onto the floor like something broken. She knelt. She reached for one of grandpa's hands and took it in hers. She pressed her face to it and broke down into uncontrollable sobbing.

Outside the night, and the rain, came down.


	24. Chapter 23 The Earth Shop

**Chapter Twenty Three – The Earth Shop  
**  
The brown painted wooden building stood empty in the rain, it was growing dark now. There were no lights on. Inside it was dark, cool and quiet except for the ticking of the clocks. There was his fireplace, cold. The golden pig on wheels. The rocking horses. The galleon on its table. The stairs that led down to the workshop, the centre of this small private world, where this mans heart had beat so strong. Down here was his workbench. An armchair was on it, stripped down, the cover and stuffing removed, the wooden frame with some new pale timbers spliced in stood awaiting the next stage of restoration. The tools were stored neatly on a wall rack; a plane, a hammer, a spokeshave, leatherworking awls, a hand drill. In the corner a broom leaned up against the wall, a small pile of sawdust brushed neatly up against the wall beside it.

-oOo-

It was a few days later. The sky was overcast. The city centre cemetery was surrounded closely by trees and buildings, the noise of the flowing tide was never far away, the drone of the city disturbed the quiet. A group in black clustered at one place. Among the crowd were Dr. and Mrs. Amasawa, Mr. Nishi's three musician friends, Luisa, Anna-Marie, Seiji, Shizuku, plus others I do not know, I never learned all their names although I recall many of them were elderly. A monk wore a white robe and over it a black surplice. He spoke words that almost no-one there heard, the way that it is at funerals. His voice reached faintly across the cemetery but a little way away the sound was soothing but the words were indistinct. It was breezy and coats and hats were pulled by the wind, encouraging people to move away quickly at the end of the service.

More distantly at the edge of the invisible circle where the sound of the monk's voice reached, there were longer grasses on higher ground. Someone else was here although he had not been invited and no-one else knew he had travelled on the train to be here. It wasn't his usual train journey and it's a mystery how he made it all this way on his own. But by a gravestone in the long grass was Moon. He sat watching the funeral, his single dark grey ear twitched from time to time as though it tickled. In the distance the service ended and people walked slowly away back to their cars in small groups, in ones and twos. Moon was just a cat. He didn't understand the passing of time but he did know that what he wanted at this moment was to just sit here and be in this place.

-oOo-

The black car drove through the streets. Seiji looked out the window at the clouds scudding across the city sky. His eyes were vacant, drained. The car pulled up outside the Earth Shop. He and the girl got out,

"No, we're fine. Just want to be alone here a while. We'll come over to the house later, OK?"

The car drove slowly off. They were both dressed in black, Seiji wore a suit but unlike the last time Shizuku had seen him dressed up, today her feelings were quite different. She wore her only black dress and her black winter calf length coat. On her head she'd chosen to wear her straw boater. She didn't wear it much now and it was a little battered. It lived in the back of her cupboard these days and rarely came out. However it was the hat she'd worn the day she found the Earth Shop that first time, when grandpa had shown her that wonderful clock, the day they'd met. And so it was absolutely right that she put it on today. She'd covered its purple ribbon with a longer one of black which trailed down at the back to her turned up collar. If she hadn't been so unhappy today she'd have looked beautiful. But her face was pinched and drawn, her eyes red. These recent days there had just been too much crying.

Seiji unlocked the side gate of the shop and stepped through. Shizuku followed him, descending to the wooden balcony. Seiji unlocked the workshop door with his key. Shizuku stopped at the balustrade and looked at the view again. The clouds were breaking a little now and the sky was lighter. Over the city in one or two places, oblique rays of sunshine came through.

"I love this view."  
"Me too. Pity we'll not see it much longer, I expect the shop will be sold."

Shizuku stayed a moment longer, just looking. She didn't want to stop looking. He spoke,

"I need to collect some things."

He went inside. A few moments later Shizuku went to the doorway, she looked in, apprehensive. On the right was grandpa Nishi's workbench, the stripped down armchair on it. She looked left. Seiji's workbench was swept bare, everything put carefully away. She stepped in quietly, she felt she shouldn't be here, this was really a place and time for Seiji to be alone now, she felt as though she were in a shrine. As she went across the room to the stairs she saw on the left the upright piano and the cello. She stopped. Faintly at first then more strongly the violin accompaniment to _Country Road _came to her. She saw, in her mind's eye, the scene from last year, her singing, Mr. Nishi and his friends playing, the jolly refrain by Minami on recorder. And Seiji. Seiji who said his playing was nothing special, had stood there making music so special the memory hurt her. She smiled. Her face had almost forgotten smiles in this last week. It was discoloured from so much crying, her eyes were inflamed. Even while she smiled tears were welling up yet again. She shook her head to drive away the memory. The song faded away. She ran past the instruments and up the stairs. She couldn't bear to be down here.

At the top of the stairs she stopped and looked around. On the table was a large box, on top of it a card. She walked over and picked up the card. She was almost too distraught to really care much; she moved automatically. Her eyes read the kanji script, usually his writing was neat, impeccably tidy and clear. This script was slanted and twisted as though the person writing it had difficulty holding a pen. She read:

TO SHIZUKU, MY LITTLE RAINDROP,  
YOUR HEART SHOULD NOT WHISPER, BUT LET IT SHOUT.  
THESE ARE FOR YOU,  
FROM YOUR FRIEND, GRANDPA.

Shizuku laid the card on the table and opened the box, she folded back layers of tissue paper. She lifted out the Baron, held him up and looked carefully at him.

"Hey there. Still not going to talk to me, hm?"

She stood the doll on the table and looked inside the box again. She folded another layer of tissue aside. Her hand hesitated, something white was in there. She pulled out the Luisa doll and held her up. She was beautiful. In the two weeks since Shizuku had sent the doll to Japan, Mr. Nishi had restored her to perfection. The ears, the whiskers and fur were like new, the eyes shone, but most amazing of all she was dressed in the most beautiful white brides dress, with a little jaunty white cap and a gossamer veil. Shizuku lifted the veil. She was overawed and once again the tears began to flow. She picked up the Baron, smart and dapper in his tail coat and top hat and hugged both dolls.


	25. Chapter 24 The End of Summer

**Chapter Twenty Four – The End of Summer**

Shizuku sat quietly in her room, at her desk. She stared at the damp grey autumn day, the damp grey autumn sky. Most of the leaves had been blown from the trees now and today still the wind blew. She glanced to her right where the Baron and Luisa dolls stood in the corner. She reached out and straightened the hem of Luisa's skirt where a book had creased it. She thought about what had happened since the funeral.

"School started. September came and went, the leaves began to fall early. We had such rain. Luisa and Anna-Marie stayed with Seiji's parents. It was funny, Luisa insisted they pay Dr. Amasawa for their board and lodging while they were there. Of course Seiji's father was quite put out by this but Luisa got her way. There is amazing strength in the old lady, I don't know where it comes from. With school keeping us busy things almost became normal again. Almost. The pain became easier to bear for me but Seiji never did get over the death of his grandpa, something in him changed for good. A light went out. Of course grandpa was such a huge part of his life, the violin making and an escape from the hell of his fathers presence. All that was now lost and Seiji still struggles to deal with that. I missed the old man's company, I missed going to his shop at weekends and cooking meals for him. But most of all I missed just sitting by his fire and listening to him talk. He could talk for hours, long into the night of anything and everything."

"Except for the afternoon of the funeral I never went to Seiji's house – he would meet me in town or he'd come to my parents apartment. At weekends I would meet Anna-Marie and Luisa at the station. Anna would go shopping and I would show Luisa the town I know, not the shops but the hilly streets up toward the library, the school, the playing fields, up on top of Iroha-Zaka where the views are. I'd push that wheelchair for hours and we'd sit and just look at the view, not talking much. Seiji told me he had a long talk with his father. He never goes into details about such things but I think his father is now making plans to appoint a director of the electronics company. Does Seiji still hate him? He won't talk about it. Luisa did say something strange to me before she left. She mentioned something about Seiji's father in such an odd way, as if she herself had talked with him about Seiji. But what does she know of the situation? Only what we talked about at her brothers house. I don't know what she could have said that might have affected his dad's decision."

"Luisa and Anna-Marie returned to Cremona, we're going to visit them next summer. Something wonderful happened with the Earth Shop though. As grandpa's last surviving child the shop became Mrs. Amasawa's property. The antiques were sold off, sadly they had to be, and the place cleared out. But she decided not to sell it. It was redecorated and refurbished and now she is renting it out. Seiji told me that she has promised it to him, when he's older, she will transfer it to his name. But will he be here? Will either of us be here?"

"Then in October the letter arrived. Seiji cycled round at once and showed it to me. Signore Guarnieri had written. He told him that of all the students on the summer course, Seiji was by far the most outstanding. He had been especially impressed by the work Seiji had done in the last week, the week following the evening he hired the suit to go to the music recital at the _Museo Stradivariano_. Signore Guarnieri wrote that something must have really inspired him that night. Therefore he would accept him as his full time pupil, an apprenticeship that would last ten years. He understood that Seiji needed to complete his high school education, and that he might want to attend university, but when he was ready, however long that was, the apprenticeship post would be waiting. After the ten years if all goes well, Seiji would be entitled to establish his own workshop in the city and officially state that he is a maker of violins in the most renowned musical city in the world. At the end of the letter there was something odd, in fact reading it was the strangest moment for me of that whole strange summer. The signore mentioned that he had not seen hands working like Seiji's did for many years, not since he had sat as a boy and watched his own father make violins. And that settled it, Seiji told his father that once he had finished high school he would emigrate to Italy."

"A year ago Seiji asked me to marry him. It was a silly childish thing, and I gave a silly childish answer. Yesterday however he asked me again. This time he wasn't being silly. And when I answered him, neither was I. The Baron and Luisa stand on my desk and even though the love between grandpa and his sweetheart is over I sometimes sit in my room, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I can feel their love pouring out of those dolls and washing over me. Sometimes it's so strong I can't breathe. I've decided that I can never bear being parted from the one I love. I will never leave Seiji, no journey halfway round the world is going to separate us. Before the war a flowing tide forced grandpa Nishi to leave Europe and come to Japan. Luisa was left behind and they never met again. Now the tide is ebbing and with it, Seiji is leaving Japan to go to Europe. I won't be left behind, I couldn't bear it. I'm going to marry him and emigrate with him. And I will take the Baron and Luisa with me. I'm going to go to Germany and find the place they were born. Then the circle will be complete."

Shizuku sat for a moment, not thinking, not worrying about anything. What would happen would happen and she would face it. And with her would be a person she could face anything with. Each of them need never be alone, they would always have each other. As she calmly sat, he got up from her bed where he'd been reading and stood behind her. He placed his hands on her shoulders. She lifted one hand and placed it over one of his. She gave him one of her special squeezes. He tilted his head forward and placed his lips on the top of her head and kissed her hair.

_The End._

_MS-C  
4th – 25th October 2006 (original screenplay/script)  
24th November – 7th December 2006 (this narrative version)_


	26. End Notes

**End Notes  
**  
Well there you have it, all done. I enjoyed writing this more than the screenplay, I found it more flexible and could do more with it. With the screenplay version there was more stop-start thinking as I had to consciously stop writing and think how to insert a camera movement or a short description and that broke up the flow of thought. In the novel version you should see that I had times when the flow of thought became a torrent and the words spewed out, almost by instinct which I really enjoy. The two new scenes in the novel version work well for me and I found _The Fountain_ really sweet and touching (the stuff about the Stradivarius violins is all true) and the time spent in the airport waiting for the flight home another strong scene. We get here a hint of the new super improved strong Shizuku who grows in _The Other Side of the World._

Now that I have been working away since 12th December on _Other Side _it's odd to come back to _Summer_ and write this end note (this is the middle of the night on 29th December). I have to flick through the chapters and refresh my memory but even after many re-reads (and I probably read _Summer_ about 50 times right through doing test and checking reads) I still enjoy relaxing with a hard copy of it and reading it again. There isn't a page that bores me, it's still fresh. That's a very self-indulgent comment but I make no apologies for it, I just wanted you to know how I think about this stuff.

If you want some real background 'meat' to the story, what inspired it, why I wrote it, etc then please read the final chapter of the _Summer_ screenplay/script version where all that juicy stuff is stored.

Oh, and finally, thank you for reading. I've enjoyed your company. If you enjoyed this then please leave a review or visit my forum. Please come back soon and we'll head off into the future with Shizuku and Seiji: to Luisa's garden again in Italy, to the final moment of discovery for Seiji and why he says his violin playing isn't anything special, to a difficult struggle with school, to a death, to a gorgeous wedding in Tokyo, to an awkward moment for Shizuku at her wedding, to Germany on an obsessive hunt for closure to the Baron's story; to ten years of hard work for Seiji in Cremona, to Rome, to Brussels and finally to Paris where Shizuku will suffer a harrowing encounter with herself. Finally, in 2007 we will return briefly to the attic room. This all takes place on _The Other Side of the World_. Please join me.

MS-C  
29 December 2006


End file.
